Publications
30 sep. 2024
This study highlights hpPCR’s role in swift SARS-CoV-2 variant tracking in Swedish wastewater, presented by SEEC at Epizone 2024.
Our early partner, Maja Malmberg from the Swedish Environmental Epidemiology Center (SEEC), recently presented groundbreaking hpPCR findings at Epizone 2024. Her keynote outlined the advantages of hpPCR in monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants in Swedish wastewater, offering essential insights into the evolving pandemic response.
"After first measuring only total SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, we got a request from the Public Health Agency in Sweden to start measuring variants as well. This was initially achieved with NGS outsourced to a national facility, but the results were sometimes delayed more than 1 month."
"When Aplex Bio initially reached out to us with hpPCR as a new solution to measure viral variants quickly within a couple of days, I got excited but my colleagues believed I was being too naive and were quite skeptical about the multiplexity, sensitivity, and rapid probe design claims."
"It turns out that hpPCR and our work with Aplex Bio ended up being a success story, and the 1-year long variant monitoring in wastewater in Sweden is now out as a pre-print and submitted for publication. So, after all, it turned out to be positive that I was 'naive'." said Maja Malmberg.
The pre-print, produced in collaboration with SEEC, showcases a full year of SARS-CoV-2 variant tracking in Swedish wastewater using hpPCR. This study demonstrates how hpPCR successfully fills the bioanalytical method gap between qPCR/dPCR and NGS, upgrading the current WBE analytical toolbox by providing:
High multiplexity per sample with single nucleotide specificity
NGS-grade mutation frequency quantification with a good correlation (r = 0.88) extremely high linearity (R2 > 0.99)
4-weeks+ early detection of variants of concern demonstrated vs sequencing
Panel customization with new probes within 2 weeks without panel re-optimization.
Read the full pre-print: Hyperplex PCR enables the next-generation of wastewater-based surveillance systems: long-term SARS-CoV-2 variant surveillance in Sweden as a case study