Detecting SARS and COVID-19 simultaneously
June 25, 2020
Dr Rosemary TAN
CEO
Veredus Laboratories Pte Ltd
Ph.D. in Molecular Immunology (2000)
‘Veredus’ is a Latin word for a messenger horse that can travel swiftly. Dr Tan and her team claim to live the word.
When Zika and SARS hit Singapore, her team were already prepared for it. Dr Tan and her team of scientists and researchers developed the VereFever kit, a lab-on-a-chip that can detect seven tropical diseases – malaria, dengue, chikungunya, West Nile, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and zika – from a single blood sample.
Now, Veredus is the first to collaborate with HTX, the new Home Team Science and Technology Agency, to develop cutting-edge capabilities for security or life-saving operations, on the VereCoV™ (Lab-on-Chip) Detection Kit.
The kit integrates an ultra-fast miniaturised Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) reactor for the amplification of nucleic acids and a customised microarray to detect SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. It can also detect a subset of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) simultaneously in one test.
Dr Tan says, “I believe that low-cost robust and efficient diagnostic tools should be readily available to all, in the fight against infectious diseases.”
With Provisional Authorisation by the Singapore Health Sciences Authority, the detection kit can be used directly by laboratories or hospitals to test patients for clinical diagnosis.
In 2004, Dr Tan founded Veredus, a multiple award-winning medical diagnostics company engaged in the development, commercialisation and manufacture of portable diagnostics tool kits.
