Company’s innovative Sal6830 COVID-19 saliva test for point-of-care is being deployed at
Health Wagon’s Move Mountains Medical Mission in Virginia
August 15, 2022 – MicroGEM has announced that the MicroGEM Sal6830 Point of Care PCR System and the MicroGEM Sal6830 SARS-CoV-2 Saliva Test have been deployed by The Health Wagon to provide free testing at its Move Mountains Medical Mission.
The Move Mountains Medical Mission, which provides free dental, vision and medical care to thousands of people who are uninsured, underinsured, or who cannot afford to pay, is held in partnership with the Department of Defense’s Innovative Readiness Training (IRT) Program. The IRT program helps prepare U.S. armed forces medical personnel to provide medical support when deployed. Many area healthcare providers also volunteer their services during the mission, which offers full dental and vision exams and treatment, as well as medical exams and diagnostics ranging from EKGs, mammograms and colonoscopies, to mental health screenings, cholesterol tests and hearing aid fittings.
The mission expects to serve more than 4,000 people over its 10-day duration. Patients are required to pre-register and have a COVID-19 test prior to receiving medical services. MicroGEM’s Sal6830 will be used to test symptomatic patients who have a negative antigen test.
“It has been our privilege to partner with The Health Wagon to bring fast saliva PCR testing to its clinics and the communities it serves,” said Peter Lee, MicroGEM’s Vice President of Strategic and Corporate Development. “This week, we are pleased our Sal6830 COVID-19 testing systems can support the Move Mountains healthcare initiative.”
“Serving underserved and rural communities without access to an easy, comfortable saliva PCR test is central to our mission to simplify molecular biology technologies to ensure that everyone has access to state-of-the-art diagnostics,” Lee said.
The Sal6830 is the first-of-its-kind point of care test for SARS-CoV-2 to use easy-to-collect saliva rather than nasal swabs and provide PCR results in just minutes. The test leverages MicroGEM’s proprietary point of care technology which combines enriched intact virus, thermophilic enzymatic RNA extraction, and microscale high-speed RT-PCR to capture whole virus to detect SARS-CoV-2, all in under 30 minutes. The test’s non-invasive saliva sampling, simple on-screen instructions, fast on-the-spot results, and portability provide a new way to quickly detect the disease in settings ranging from healthcare, film production sets, and government and academic facilities, to mobile testing sites, retirement homes and long-term care communities.
The system recently received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The company plans on seeking authorization to expand the test menu and ruggedize the system to address austere field conditions presented in military and disaster medicine use cases. Plans are also underway to adapt the system for the fast-growing precision medicine healthcare market with quantitative gene expression panels used as biomarkers.
MicroGEM has established a U.S.-based supply chain, with R&D pilot manufacturing facilities in Charlottesville, Virginia, large-scale test kit production facilities in Ogden, Utah, and instrument production facilities in Hudson, New Hampshire.
About The Health Wagon
The Health Wagon is an innovative leader in the provision of quality health care services that are compassionate, comprehensive, and accessible whose ultimate mandate is to promote a healthy community through education, empowerment, collaboration, and outreach. The Health Wagon provides health care to the medically underserved people in the mountains of Appalachia and, since its founding more than four decades ago, has grown to include five mobile units and three freestanding clinics. The organization continues to expand to provide health care to more residents of Southwest Virginia, ensuring that those who are medically underserved do not fall through the cracks.
To register for the Move Mountains Medical Mission, call 276-328-8850.
About MicroGEM
MicroGEM is democratizing molecular diagnostics by moving molecular techniques out of conventional, highly skilled laboratories to non-laboratory settings. The company's innovative enzymatic approach to nucleic acid extraction provides the foundation for efficient sample preparation suitable for PCR analysis. Recently awarded over $50 million by the National Institutes of Health, Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics (RADx) initiative, MicroGEM has leveraged its RNA extraction capabilities to develop the MicroGEM Sal6830 Point of Care PCR System and the MicroGEM Sal6830 SARS-CoV-2 Saliva Test, representing the next generation of point-of-need solutions for the management of infectious diseases and other personalized medicine applications.
www.microgembio.com/covid-19/contact
Contact: Lianne Landers, Sr. Director of Corporate Communications
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