2021 Year in Review: On Why We Do What We Do

Posted on by Christina Olivas

After another challenging year, we’re grateful that the work we do here helps

In more precedented times, 2021 might’ve been described as a banner year for Luminex. Despite the persistent challenges presented by the ongoing pandemic, our teams delivered critical assays and reagents, scaled production of our COVID-19 offerings, expanded our team, services, and facilities, and supported scientists and healthcare providers across the world. We did this and more—in the field, from our international offices, from our homes—all while transitioning into a new, integrated company with DiaSorin following our acquisition back in July.

2021 Year in Review

While there is much to celebrate, we’re aware that against the backdrop of the rising toll of this outbreak—now, day 590 since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global public health threat,1 with more than 276 million confirmed cases and 5.4 million deaths worldwide2 plus new variants to be cautious of—the close to a successful year for our business is hardly a silver lining for what we’ve lost to this pandemic. The last two years have flown by so quickly, most of us haven’t had time to grieve our losses. We’ve adapted to life at a new pace, and there hasn’t been much time to reminisce over our pre-pandemic lives.

There is still hope, however: there have also been 8.5 billion vaccine doses administered across the globe, with much of Europe, China, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Canada leading the way with over a 70% vaccination rate.3 Testing and treatment options have also come a long way in just two years—seeing the healthcare community and scientists from all over the world develop solutions at this pace has been incredibly humbling.

As a biotech company, most of us are just grateful that the work we do here helps. It helps improve diagnostics (which helps improve health outcomes), it helps support researchers investigating disease mechanics or developing therapeutics, it helps reduce bench time for busy lab techs. This is why we do what we do.

Forging a path forward

As COVID-19 persevered, our teams worked to increase production of our SARS-CoV-2 offerings, even as we added the Guava® SARS-CoV-2 Assay (RUO), the ARIES® SARS-CoV-2 CE-IVD Assay, the NxTAG® Respiratory Pathogen Panel + SARS-CoV-2 (EUA), and the xMAP® SARS-CoV-2 Multi-Antigen IgG Assay (EUA and RUO) to our portfolio.

Included in our launches, we also added the fourth-generation Guava® easyCyte™ System, as well as easyCyte 21 CFR Part 11 Regulation, Amnis® IDEAS® Software v6.3, and MagPlex® Monitoring Microspheres to our catalog, making good on our promise to continue to deliver tools that can help our customers take their research to the next level.

We also launched xMAP INTELLIFLEX® Systems this year, which build on more than 25 years of xMAP innovation. This was a significant milestone for us—the technology behind xMAP was foundational for our company. It was nearly three decades ago when, rumor has it, a group of interdisciplinary scientists met at a restaurant in Texas and sketched out the idea that would become xMAP Technology on a napkin, and we’ve come a long way since then.

xMAP INTELLIFLEX offers sensitivity, an open architecture design that supports both commercially available kits and custom assays, and, importantly, a second reporter channel. The second reporter allow users to acquire data about two parameters per target protein or nucleic acid, on up to 500 targets per well, effectively doubling your data. We’re really excited to see what the xMAP community will be able to do with this capability as we continue to roll these systems out in 2022.

Supporting our community through custom services

We’re so confident in what xMAP Technology can do for our customers in fact that we’ve also expanded our custom immunoassay services and the LuminexPLORE Lab. Backed by a team of scientists skilled in all things multiplexing across multiple applications, in addition to custom assay development services, the LuminexPLORE Lab supports assay optimization, conversion, validation options, and more. With their combined knowledge, no project is too big or too small for our team of experts.

Notably, as we look ahead to 2022, the LuminexPLORE team will move into a new and improved lab space in our Austin headquarters, enabling them to expand their capabilities and throughput. These services can provide a lot of time and resource-saving benefits, so we’re looking forward to hearing what the LuminexPLORE team and the scientists we collaborate with accomplish in the coming year.

A unique combination of specialists

DiaSorin’s acquisition of our company in July marked another big milestone in our 26th year. As experts in immuno- and molecular diagnostics, the merge with a larger, multi-national company will bring the best of both businesses to our customer bases. We’re fortunate to have built a strong community over the years, and with our combined expertise, we look forward to developing additional tools and solutions across the academic, biopharmaceutical, and clinical spaces. How we can help just got better.

Tackling COVID-19 and beyond

We may not know exactly what next year has in store, but as we shared at the close of our first year of the pandemic—we’re dedicated to supporting our customers and partners as long as this lasts. Whether it’s SARS-CoV-2 testing solutions, comprehensive diagnostic panels, or research systems, reagents, and tools, we’re here for you however you need it. We’ll be here when this is over, too.

Warm wishes from our families to yours. Happy holidays from Luminex!

References:

  1. Opening Remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19, 11 March 2020. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General. WHO (Internet). Accessed 2021 Dec. Available from: https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—11-march-2020.
  2. COVID-19 Dashboard. The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (Internet). Accessed 2021 Dec. Available from: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html.
  3. Vaccination progress across the world. The Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University (Internet). Accessed 2021 Dec. Available from: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/international.

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