Synthetic biology company SGI-DNA is touting its efforts to accelerate research in the creation of vaccines for SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing the COVID-19 pandemic.
The San Diego-based company said in a news release last month that it built the genes thought to be critical to developing successful vaccines against the virus and made those tools available as genomic assemblies and DNA libraries.
Using the company’s BioXp 3200 automated gene printing system that was used to create vaccines and therapeutics against the H7N9 bird flu in 2013, SGI-DNA hopes that it can provide its partners with a vehicle to develop vaccines for the coronavirus that has caused widespread crisis across the globe.
SGI-DNA is donating $50,000 toward the purchase of a BioXp 3200 system for researchers focused on the coronavirus outbreak, as well as other pandemics. The company’s goal is for the speed of its science to outpace the spread of the virus, according to SGI-DNA chief technology officer Dan Gibson.
“There is zero time to waste, which is why we’ve built resources for our partners and are co-funding purchases of the BioXp 3200 for anyone working on a vaccine or therapeutic treatment,” SGI-DNA CEO Todd Nelson said in the news release. “Researchers need synthetic DNA and RNA, which the BioXp 3200 can provide in as little as eight hours. We simply don’t have ‘six to eight weeks, or longer’ to wait.”
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