Welcome to Molecular Diagnostics: An Eye Toward the Future, a special edition podcast series produced by The Scientist’s Creative Services Team. This series is brought to you by Thermo Fisher Scientific, a world leader in serving science. Their mission is to enable customers to make the world healthier, cleaner, and safer. Whether their customers are accelerating life sciences research, solving complex analytical challenges, improving patient diagnostics and therapies, or increasing productivity in their laboratories, Thermo Fisher Scientific is here to support them.

Scientists continuously develop new assays to fill unmet diagnostic needs. While methods such as quantitative PCR have emerged as essential tools in molecular diagnostics, scientists developing and administering these assays still must overcome technical challenges. In this podcast series, The Scientist’s Creative Services Team talks to experts in assay development about their experiences designing and implementing assays and protocols for future molecular diagnostics.

In this episode, Niki Spahich from The Scientist’s Creative Services Team spoke with Anne Wyllie, a research scientist in epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, about the development of SalivaDirect—a quantitative PCR protocol, authorized by the FDA under an emergency use authorization, that detects SARS-CoV-2 in saliva.