Comparison of Luminex NxTAG Respiratory Pathogen Panel and xTAG Respiratory Viral Panel FAST Version 2 for the Detection of Respiratory Viruses

Lee, Chun Kiat; Lee, Hong Kai; Ng, Christopher Wei Siong; Chiu, Lily; Tang, Julian Wei-Tze; Loh, Tze Ping; Koay, Evelyn Siew-Chuan

Experimentally, the xTAG RVP FAST v2 assay had a turnaround time of 5 hr for 48 samples. However, the need to manipulate post-amplification products presents an inherent risk for laboratory contamination. Moreover, the need to remove the seal from the vessel during the detection presents another potential source of sample cross-contamination, leading to false-positives. Besides cross-contamination, high background noise (Fig. 1) is another source of false-positives, which is commonly associated with the Luminex bead-based suspension array technology due to suboptimal hybridization conditions involving temperature divergences or operator variations. In contrast, the NxTAG RPP is a closed-tube, one-step system, which abolishes the need for post-amplification product manipulation and removal of the seal. The hands-on time is significantly reduced with the simplified workflow, alleviating process variations and giving a turnaround time of < 4 hr for 48 samples. Overall, the streamlined workflow minimizes cross-contamination and background noise. However, initially, where the extracted nucleic acid is used to resuspend the preplated lyophilized bead reagents, the repeat pipetting can cause possible cross-over contamination. Finally, the NxTAG RPP can process between 1 and 96 samples per run, without wasting additional consumables or reagents. This flexible throughput can cater to the needs of laboratories with different and/or variable volume demands.