Fast Track Diagnostics

Core business

Syndromic real-time PCR multiplexing that serves the clinical need. Fast-track diagnostics produces an extensive range of advanced multiplex assays for the detection of viruses, bacteria, fungi and parasites. Standard protocols mean that the assays are easy to introduce to the work-flow, and they are used in routine daily use in over 500 laboratories worldwide. Syndromic grouping of the tests leads to quick, reliable, clinically relevant results to help clinicians minimise uncertainty for patients.

The tests are compatible for use on a wide variety of real-time PCR platforms and all the reagents necessary are supplied in kits to suit small, medium and large laboratory needs.

Products & services

Fast-track diagnostics assays are grouped to aid the identification of the underlying cause of most infection syndromes facing the clinician — for example, respiratory, diarrhoea, meningitis, red eye and fever — which means that the clinician does not need to request that a specific pathogen be tested for in a patient sample, which is usually very difficult using clinical criteria alone.

As all the assays are multiplexed, this not only allows the detection of all the pathogens causing a patient’s illness, it is also the most cost-effective way of detecting multiple pathogens simultaneously. By eliminating the need for additional runs and more tubes of reagent, using Fast-track diagnostics assays keeps the cost per patient sample to a minimum.

Major HealthTech projects

Fast-track diagnostics has a commitment to research and diagnostic laboratories in the emerging world. Its kits are used by the GABRIEL network as well as for projects funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded PERCH project.

Technical / technological capabilities

Fast-track diagnostics offers more than 50 different real time PCR assays detecting more than 100 pathogens. Its focus is to offer affordable, high quality products for all sizes of diagnostic and research laboratories.Fast-track diagnostic kits detect up to four different pathogens per tube using four different dyes, so only the real-time PCR cyclers that can detect these dyes, the excitation and emission wavelengths, are suitable. A list of the instruments that are fully validated with Fast-track diagnostic kits is given below (when the LightCycler480® is used, to correct crosstalk, Fast-track diagnostics offers a colour compensation kit free of charge).

Recommended automatic, semi-automatic and manual extraction methods to use with Fast-track diagnostic assays are listed on their website.

Main customers / collaborations

Fast-track diagnostic kits are used by more than 500 public and private molecular biology and research laboratories worldwide, by the GABRIEL network and for projects funded by the Wellcome Trust as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded PERCH project.