CQuentia Announces Partnership with Ginkgo Bioworks to Scale COVID Prevention Response through Pooled Testing in K-12 Schools

FORT WORTH, Texas, March 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, CQuentia announced its partnership with Concentric by Ginkgo, the biosecurity and public health effort at Ginkgo Bioworks, Inc. ("Ginkgo"), the organism company. Together, they will provide a scalable and simple testing modality – pooled testing – to serve communities across the country working to establish in-person learning in their schools.

In recent days, the Biden Administration has announced it will invest $10 billion to increase COVID testing to help schools reopen, $2.25 billion to scale up testing in underserved populations, and provide new guidance on asymptomatic testing in schools, workplaces, and congregate settings. This investment is part of President Biden's National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness.

In addition to asymptomatic testing, the CDC will invest nearly $200 million to identify, track, and mitigate emerging strains of SARS-CoV-2 through genomic sequencing. Increasing genomic testing of positive samples will improve the CDC's ability to detect emerging variants and understand their spread with greater precision. This means laboratories, such as CQuentia, that can accommodate both COVID-19 testing and genomic sequencing are well-positioned to become a one-stop-shop to handle the country's COVID-19 testing needs. Among other nationwide COVID-19 testing programs, CQuentia was a 2020 participant in the PACER HHS program for COVID-19 testing offered through Walmart drive-through locations across the country.

"Now, more than ever, the world needs accurate molecular testing to identify those people who are at-risk, infected or immune to the novel coronavirus to better understand, manage and contain this pandemic," said Alan Meeker, CEO of CQuentia. "Through mobilization of CQuentia's integrated resources, including our molecular & sequencing laboratory and COVID-19 test, we believe we can offer value by providing reliable pooled testing results to K-12 and other congregate populations in as little one day from receipt of specimen. That's why we're excited to announce this partnership with Concentric by Ginkgo, and to utilize our lab capacity for this vital national effort."

Concentric by Ginkgo's goal is to provide easy, affordable pooled testing to every school in America, allowing schools to test every student, every week. Pooled classroom testing, which combines swabs from all consenting individuals in a classroom and runs them as a single test, can significantly increase testing capacity and lower the cost of testing programs. Concentric currently operates testing for hundreds of schools across more than a dozen states.

"We are proud to announce our partnership with CQuentia, both because of the technical excellence they've demonstrated, as well as the strategic importance of their location and logistical integration with FedEx SuperHub," said Jason Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Ginkgo Bioworks. "As we rebuild from this biological catastrophe, testing every student, every week can help bring confidence to communities operating in-person learning, supporting them with the information they need to make decisions and interrupt potential chains of transmission."

To learn more about Concentric by Ginkgo or to get your school district involved, head over to concentricbyginkgo.com.

About CQuentia

CQuentia is a comprehensive molecular laboratory for personalized medicine. Having a focused history in Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) in both sequencing and assay work as well as a robust history in viral pathogen testing and identification, CQuentia is uniquely positioned to pivot for nationwide COVID-19 testing. Its CLIA labs have validated and offered patient testing for COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) since early 2020. Recently, CQuentia has performed 100% concordance in validating pooled testing through the Gingko process with the Thermo Fisher TaqPath assay. CQuentia is licensed and/or authorized to test for COVID-19 in all 50 US States. For information, visit www.cquentia.com

About Ginkgo Bioworks

Headquartered in Boston, Ginkgo uses the most advanced technology on the planet—biology—to grow better products. The company's cell programming platform is enabling the growth of biotechnology across diverse markets, from food to fragrance to pharmaceuticals. Ginkgo is also actively supporting a number of COVID-19 response efforts, including community testing, epidemiological tracing, vaccine development and therapeutics discovery. For more information, visit www.ginkgobioworks.com.

SOURCE CQuentia

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