The National Institutes of Health said Sept. 2 that it is giving $129.3 million to nine companies to scale up manufacturing of COVID-19 tests.
The contracts are part of the NIH's Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics, or RADx, program it started in late April to speed the development of COVID-19 tests.
The money will support developing technologies for COVID-19 tests, such as portable point-of-care tests that can give immediate results. The new technologies will significantly increase the number, type and availability of tests by millions per week this fall, the NIH said.
The nine companies receiving the money are:
- MatMaCorp in Lincoln, Neb.
- Maxim Biomedical in Rockville, Md.
- MicroGEM International in Charlottesville, Va.
- Aegis Sciences in Nashville, Tenn.
- Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
- Ceres Nanoscience in Manassas, Va.
- Illumina in San Diego
- PathGroup in Nashville, Tenn.
- Sonic Healthcare USA in Austin, Texas
Read the NIH's full news release here.