The COVID-19 XPRIZE and the need for scalable, fast, and widespread testing

Matthew J MacKay^{1

2

3}, Anna C Hooker⁴, Ebrahim Afshinnekoo^{1

2

3}, Marc Salit⁴, Jason Kelly⁵, Jonathan V Feldstein⁶, Nick Haft⁶, Doug Schenkel⁷, Subhalaxmi Nambi⁷, Yizhi Cai⁸, Feng Zhang⁹, George Church⁹, Junbiao Dai¹⁰, Cliff L Wang¹¹, Shawn Levy¹², Jeff Huber¹¹, Hanlee P Ji^{4

13}, Alison Kriegel¹⁴, Anne L Wyllie¹⁵, Christopher E Mason^{16

17

18

19}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.
² The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.
³ The WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
⁴ Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵ Ginkgo Bioworks, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Resilience Health, New York, NY, USA.
⁷ Cowen and Company, Boston, MA, USA.
⁸ Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
⁹ Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁰ Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China.
¹¹ OpenCovidScreen, San Francisco, CA, USA.
¹² HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, AL, USA.
¹³ Stanford Genome Technology Center West, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
¹⁴ Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
¹⁷ The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
¹⁸ The WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
¹⁹ The Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.

PMID: 32820257
PMCID: PMC7543743
DOI: 10.1038/s41587-020-0655-4

The COVID-19 XPRIZE and the need for scalable, fast, and widespread testing

Matthew J MacKay et al. Nat Biotechnol. 2020 Sep.

. 2020 Sep;38(9):1021-1024.

doi: 10.1038/s41587-020-0655-4.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.
² The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA.
³ The WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
⁴ Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology, Stanford, CA, USA.
⁵ Ginkgo Bioworks, Cambridge, MA, USA.
⁶ Resilience Health, New York, NY, USA.
⁷ Cowen and Company, Boston, MA, USA.
⁸ Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
⁹ Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, USA.
¹⁰ Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Shenzhen, China.
¹¹ OpenCovidScreen, San Francisco, CA, USA.
¹² HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, AL, USA.
¹³ Stanford Genome Technology Center West, Palo Alto, CA, USA.
¹⁴ Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
¹⁶ Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
¹⁷ The HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Institute for Computational Biomedicine, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
¹⁸ The WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.
¹⁹ The Feil Family Brain and Mind Research Institute, New York, NY, USA. chm2042@med.cornell.edu.

PMID: 32820257
PMCID: PMC7543743
DOI: 10.1038/s41587-020-0655-4

No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests

J.K. is cofounder and board member for Gingko Bioworks. C.E.M. is a cofounder and board member for Aevum, Biotia and Onegevity, as well as an advisor or compensated speaker for Abbvie, Acuamark Diagnostics, ArcBio, Bio-Rad, DNA Genotek, Genialis, Genpro, HomoDeus, Karius, Illumina, MilliporeSigma, Nanostring, New England Biolabs, Qiagen, Promega, Resilience Health, Tempus Labs, Whole Biome, and Zymo Research. A.C.H., H.P.J., C.E.M. and M.J.M. advise Resilience Health. J.H. is a board member or shareholder for Grail and Illumina. G.C. has conflicts: http://arep.med.harvard.edu/gmc/tech.html.

Figures

**Fig. 1 ∣. Cumulative number of EUA virology tests approved from February to July 2020.**
NGS, next-generation sequencing; NAAT, nucleic acid amplification test; LFA, lateral flow assay; RT, reverse transcription; ddPCR, Droplet Digital PCR; dPCR, digital PCR; qPCR, quantitative PCR.

**Fig. 2 ∣. Performance and targets of different EUA virology tests.**
a, Limit of detection (LoD) for tests that reported copies/μL or copies/mL (presented in copies/μL throughout). b, EUA virology test targets. SARS-CoV-2 5′-3′ genome on horizontal axis, with tests on the vertical axis and colors indicating whether the test has one target (red) or multiple targets (brown) in the specified region. Each line indicates a test source (company or institution). If an EUA reported different LoDs for different targets, sample types or methods, each is displayed as a separate row. NGS, next-generation sequencing; NAAT, nucleic acid amplification test; LFA, lateral flow assay; RT, reverse transcription; ddPCR, Droplet Digital PCR; dPCR, digital PCR; qPCR, quantitative PCR; RDRP, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase; DSP, diagnostic sample preparation; NP, nasopharyngeal; OP, oropharyngeal; rRT, real-time reverse transcriptase.

**Fig. 3 ∣. The XPRIZE/OpenCovidScreen competition.**
The OpenCovidScreen competition is intended to identify fast, scalable, and cheap SAR-CoV-2 virology tests through a series of phases, starting with submitting test and method information (top), a proficiency test including blinded samples, and a clinical validation phase (middle). The top competitors identified on the basis of their methods, results and scalability will then be chosen for deployment to enable widespread usage of their tests (bottom).

See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

1. Arnaout R et al. SARS-CoV2 testing: the limit of detection matters. Preprint at bioRxiv 10.1101/2020.06.02.131144 (2020). - DOI
1. Whitman JD et al. Test performance evaluation of SARS-CoV-2 serological assays. Preprint at medRxiv 10.1101/2020.04.25.20074856 (2020). - DOI
1. Anonymous. The COVID-19 testing debacle. Nat. Biotechnol 38, 653 (2020). - PubMed
1. Khailany RA, Safdar M & Ozaslan M Gene Rep. 19, 100682 (2020). - PMC - PubMed

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The COVID-19 XPRIZE and the need for scalable, fast, and widespread testing

Affiliations

The COVID-19 XPRIZE and the need for scalable, fast, and widespread testing

Authors

Affiliations

Conflict of interest statement

Figures

References

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding

LinkOut - more resources

Full Text Sources

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