Selected category: Virology

Work to characterize and further understand the molecular pathology of SARSCoV- 2 became a focus for many virology departments following the identification of the novel virus responsible for COVID-19. Drs Marek Widera, Alexander Wilhelm and colleagues at University Hospital Frankfurt, Germany, turned their attention to developing an in vitro cell culture model that could realistically mimic the viral replication cycle, to decipher the mechanism of COVID-19 infection.

Researchers at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory have completely automated an influenza hemagglutination inhibition assay on a Freedom EVO® workstation using the newly developed FluHema™ module from SciRobotics. It is the first laboratory in the world to achieve this, now running and analyzing up to 128 microplates daily with far better flexibility, reproducibility and overall assay performance.