Among the many changes that came out of the era of Covid-19 was the dramatic growth of one of the pillars of our local biosciences sector, the TGen Pathogen and Microbiome Division, better known as TGen North.
TGen North was on the front lines very early on in the crisis, using genomics to analyze the structure of the coronavirus and develop one of the first tests to detect it. The pandemic also prompted the nonprofit to build its own CLIA-certified diagnostics lab. (CLIA, which stands for Clinical Lab Improvement Amendments, is the federal certification needed before a lab can accept human samples for diagnostic testing.)
“That allowed us to test patient samples and return the results to patients and clinicians, which we hadn’t done before,” said Dave Engelthaler, PhD, the director of TGen North. “It had been a long-term goal for us to develop a diagnostics lab, but there’s nothing like an emergency to put things into place.”
