On Wednesday (30 March 2022), the WHO released an updated, and the third version, of their Strategic Preparedness, Readiness and Response Plan for COVID-19. During his opening remarks at the press conference, WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, emphasised the importance of equitable vaccination and continued surveillance – not only in response to COVID-19, but also for future epidemics.

SARS-CoV-2 sequence analysis software are NGS tools for analysing and interpreting the DNA of the coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. There are multiple steps in the analysis workflow, and at each step, a researcher or laboratory scientist can use an array of different SARS-CoV-2 sequence analysis software to obtain the results they need.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a catch-all phrase for all the sequencing technologies that share the approach of using massively parallel processing. Compared to first-generation sequencing (commonly referred to as Sanger sequencing) that produces a single read (DNA fragment) at a time, NGS technologies can produce billions of short reads per experiment. With billions of sequenced DNA fragments, it is clear to see that NGS technologies are completely reliant on the availability of NGS tools to support them.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an international public health emergency as identified by the WHO. If no action is taken, we could be spending an additional 1,2 trillion dollars per year on health by 2050 due to the impact of AMR. Much work has been done in the public health space to try and bring attention to this pandemic, however it remains an under recognised and poorly addressed threat.

End-to-end bioinformatics solutions are software, such as sequence analysis programs, that turn laboratory-produced data into interpretable results. Instead of spending hours analysing each individual experimental dataset, results from routine laboratory tests can be translated to meaningful results simply and quickly by end-to-end bioinformatics solutions.

There are few feelings more distressing to a software developer than receiving news of a totally unknown error experienced by an important customer. At Hyrax Biosciences, we’re always trying to get just a little bit better at what we do: to improve our software, tests, review processes and deployment frameworks. We want our users to be able to forget about their NGS data analysis, and concentrate on what they do best: generating data.

Infectious disease genotyping has become a mainstream topic due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but finding variants and reporting their significance is as old as the field of genetics itself.

Friends have repeatedly asked me the same question over the course of my last two years at Hyrax Biosciences. The question begins with "what’s it like working on the pandemic?", which is usually swiftly followed by either "that must be so meaningful" or "that must be so hard".

The World Health Organization (WHO) report on HIV drug resistance was published at the end of November 2021. The report highlights the progress in HIVDR surveillance and emphasises the need for continued monitoring as regimens shift to include antiretroviral therapy (ART) targeting integrase.

Concerns around the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants that have increased transmissibility and/or reduce vaccine efficacy means that countries are continuing to scale their SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance.

Hyrax Biosciences is excited to announce that we have included analysis support for sequence data generating using Oxford Nanopore Technologies. This update means that the Exatype platform, Hyrax Biosciences' genotyping software solution, now includes analysis support for all major sequencing platforms: Illumina, Ion Torrent and Oxford Nanopore.

At Hyrax Biosciences we continue to support the surveillance efforts for SARS-COV-2, to be able to detect and monitor Variants of Concern (VoC) and Variants of Interest (VoI). Our software platform Exatype makes the data analysis for next generation sequencing (NGS) data a simple, automated step in the genotyping process.

In a step towards streamlining SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance, Hyrax Biosciences, a leader in sequence analysis for a range of pathogens, today announced a co-marketing agreement with Roche Diagnostics that will provide integrated sample prep to reporting workflows for translational researchers globally.

Hyrax Biosciences, in collaboration with Thermo Fisher Scientific,  has launched the latest version of their Exatype Sanger HIV solution which now includes testing for resistance to integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs).

With new SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern emerging around the world, global surveillance has become more important than ever. Large-scale sequencing allows for the identification of any new dominance of specific variants, clusters of outbreaks, and the monitoring of viral variants that impact the efficacy of vaccines.