Clear Labs Announces Salmonella Serotyping Capabilities Powered by Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS)

MENLO PARK, Calif., Feb. 19, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Clear Labs, the only automated and intelligent NGS platform purpose-built for food safety testing, today announced new serotyping capabilities on its Clear Safety platform. Food safety professionals can now detect up to 40 unique Salmonella serotypes in an enriched sample in about 24 hours.

With this product update, Clear Safety allows food manufacturers and service labs to test for presence/absence of pathogens and serotypes at the same time, avoiding the 3-5 day cost of traditional serotyping methodologies. By having both sets of information at the same time, customers are able to make faster, more informed decisions that impact consumer safety and operational efficiencies.

Clear Safety's new serotyping capabilities will give food safety professionals more information than ever before. Whereas legacy technologies are limited in their ability to detect multiple serotypes, the Clear Safety platform can screen for up to 40 serotypes, including several combinations of serotypes and even commonly used laboratory control strains.

What is more, the tunability of the platform means that customers have more control over their test results. They can choose if they want to test at the genus level for the presence or absence of Salmonella, at the species level for Salmonella bongori and Salmonella enterica, and at the serotype level. Furthermore, customers do not have to test for all 40 serotypes available on the Clear Safety platform. Instead, they can choose which serotypes are most applicable for their test runs.

"We have always been committed to providing the food industry with the accuracy, speed, and tunability they need to protect consumers and improve operational efficiencies," said Sasan Amini, CEO of Clear Labs. "With Salmonella being one of the most common and costly pathogens today, we're proud to be able to help safety professionals act on the information they need quickly and with confidence."

Key Benefits of Serotyping with Clear Safety

• Cost Effective: With Clear Safety, Salmonella screening and serotyping are conducted at the same time, using the same assays, media, and consumables.
• Fast Turnaround Time: Clear Safety's Salmonella serotyping can be conducted in about 24 hours, enabling customers to act faster when a contamination event occurs.
• Highest Accuracy: Using NGS, Clear Safety looks at multiple regions of the genome in order to correctly identify serotypes with superior accuracy.
• Clear Results: Rather than relying on an expert eye to analyze colonies, Clear Safety provides objective, easy-to-read results, saving time and removing subjectivity.
• Multiple Serovars: Unlike traditional serology, Clear Safety can detect multiple serovars at the same time, thus providing more complete information about samples.
• Flexible Assays: Customers can choose their level of specificity and test for any combination of Salmonella species and available serotypes.

The Clear Safety platform is comprised of the most advanced NGS technology, robust bioinformatics, and the world's largest molecular food database. In addition to Clear Safety, Clear Labs' platform supports testing for authenticity, GMO, and microbiome testing.

The platform's unprecedented level of automation and robotics reduces both labor and errors, and Clear Labs' AI and machine learning provide trends, environmental monitoring, and predictive risk assessments.

Clear Labs has over 40 customers globally, including many of the leading food brands and service labs around the world.

To learn more about Clear Safety, please visit: http://www.clearlabs.com/.

About Clear Labs

Driven by a mission to safen the global food supply, Clear Labs is the only automated and intelligent NGS platform purpose-built for food safety testing.

Clear Labs enables major brands to capitalize on a new era of food safety technologies by advancing DNA sequencing, bioinformatics, and robotics to create preventative food safety management systems.

We enable multi-target analysis of pathogens through all desired forms of molecular characterization at lower cost and with greater accuracy.

The world's largest food brands are already realizing the advantages of Clear Labs' platform. Our goal is to raise the standard for the way food is tested and analyzed before it is consumed by billions of people each day.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.clearlabs.com/.

SOURCE Clear Labs