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In the past few weeks, we’ve received over 2,600 COVID19 related plasmid requests. These plasmids have been heading to research labs in 43 countries.

COVID-19 research is happening fast and we’re glad to join these efforts and help scientists through plasmid sharing and more. These include plasmids that have been in the repository for many years, and new plasmids that scientists have deposited in the last several weeks. We've grown the collection of COVID-19 related plasmids to over 500 plasmids and our mission to accelerate research through sharing reagents has never been so important as scientists work around the clock to find solutions for COVID-19. Sharing speeds science.

This year, Addgene welcomes three new members to the Board of Directors: Khandan Baradaran, Frank Stegmeier, and Luk Vandenberghe. We’re excited to grow the team and bring on scientists with a diverse set of experiences. Let’s meet the newest board members and get to know them!

One of the main tenets of our quality control (QC) mantra is to do our utmost to ensure that scientists are receiving the exact materials that they think they are. To address this, several years ago we partnered with Seqwell to establish a next-generation sequencing (NGS) QC platform that allows us to provide scientists with complete plasmid sequences. After launching our viral service in 2016, we adapted this platform to accommodate adeno-associated viral vector (AAV) samples and created a simplified process, termed viral genome sequencing (VGS), to confirm the identity and serotype of our AAV preparations. We recently published a description of the VGS process and use cases in Human Gene Therapy.

Science is a global endeavor, and that can often mean that scientists who live across the country or around the world from each other are collaborating on projects. When I was a graduate student, I led a collaborative project between my lab in Pennsylvania and a team in Paris, France. While efforts like these accelerate the progress of research, they can also present hurdles for the team of researchers involved. Communication is a major challenge when researchers are communicating across disciplines or doing different tasks. But these challenges can be exaggerated when communicating across time zones, digitally, and asynchronously. The best way to keep everyone on the same page is to make communication a non-negotiable part of your collaboration. Luckily, there are techniques and tools that helped make my experience run smoothly and can help other teams successfully overcome these challenges, too.

Originally published Aug 30, 2018 and last updated April 16, 2020.

Sensitive and specific nucleic acid detection is crucial for clinical diagnostics, genotyping, and biotechnological advancements. Many methods of nucleic acid detection however, either lack the sensitivity or the specificity to detect nucleic acids at low concentrations and/or are too expensive, time-consuming, and complex to use outside of standard laboratories. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, qPCR can be used to diagnose the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, but inadequate access to reagents and equipment has become a bottleneck.