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Health

Clinical diagnostics

News and Updates

Blog Posts

A medical worker wears gloves as she prepares to swab the nose of a female patient.

Measuring the Accuracy of PCR Tests Can Improve Health Care Beyond COVID-19

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Ming Zheng stands outside smiling and holding a model of a nanotube made of a lattice of smaller tubes.

To See Life in a Drop of Blood

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overlapping wavelengths of light enter from the left and pass into the optical frequency comb device. The image shows a visualization of the different wavelengths separated into even increments.

Making Measurements With a Fine-Toothed Comb

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Events

Conceptual illustration of cells, a flow cytometry stream, automation and collaboration with logos for NIST and NIAID underneath.

AI and Flow Cytometry Workshop

Mon, Jun 9 - Tue, Jun 10 2025
A NIST–FDA–NIAID Co-Organized Workshop This workshop aims to advance AI/ML applications in flow cytometry and related

Projects and Programs

Unit of RGTM 10263 -- H5N1 Avian flu synthetic RNA fragments

H5 Influenza Positive Controls

Ongoing
In response to the current H5N1 avian influenza outbreak, NIST has developed a research grade test material (RGTM) for PCR-based assays. This material contains 3 vials with RNA fragments for HA (Part A), NA (Part B), and MP (Part C). A NIST Reference Material is also under development. The guidance
Breathalyzer

Standards Development to Ensure Reliable Breath Analysis in the Field

Ongoing
Numerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been identified in human breath. These compounds can be produced by the body or by organisms in the body (e.g., bacteria or viruses) and provide a non-invasive window into human health. Inexpensive point-of-care devices are being developed to diagnose
GIAB Logo

Cancer Genome in a Bottle

Ongoing
Goals: This project is an extension of the Genome in a Bottle Consortium to develop the technical infrastructure (reference standards, reference methods, and reference data) to enable translation of cancer genome sequencing to clinical practice and innovations in technologies. The priority of GIAB

Publications

Certification of Standard Reference Material® 965c Glucose in Frozen Human Serum

Author(s)
Amanda Bayless, William Davis, Elena Wood, Abraham Kuri Cruz, Johanna Camara, Blaza Toman, Komal Dahya, Katherine Earl, Chui Tse, Uliana Danilenko, Hubert Vesper
Standard Reference Material (SRM) 965c Glucose in Frozen Human Serum is intended for use in validating methods for the determination of glucose in human serum

Commutability Assessment of New Standard Reference Materials (SRMs) for Determining Serum Total 25-Hydroxyvitamin D using Ligand Binding and Liquid Chromatography – Tandem Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) Assays

Author(s)
Stephen Wise, Etienne Cavalier, Pierre LUKAS, Stephanie Peeters, caroline Le Goff, Laura Briggs, Emma Williams, Ekaterina Mineva, Christine Pfeiffer, Hubert Vesper, Christian Popp, Christian Beckert, Jan Schultess, Kevin Wang, Carole Tourneur, Camille Pease, Dominik Osterritter, Ralf Fischer, Ben Saida, Chao Dou, Satoshi Kojima, Hope Weiler, Agnieszka Bielecki, Heather Pham, Alexandra Bennett, Shawn You, Amit Ghoshal, Chistian Vogl, James Freeman, Neil Parker, Samantha Pagliaro, Jennifer Cheek, Jie Li, Hisao Tsukamoto, Karen Galvin, Kevin Cashman, Hsuan-Chieh Liao, Andrew Norbert Hoofnagle, Jeffery Budd, Adam Kuszak, Ashley Boggs-Russell, Carolyn Burdette, Grace Hahm, Federica Nalin, Johanna Camara
Commutability is where the measurement response for a reference material (RM) is the same as for an individual patient sample with the same concentration of

Small variant benchmark from a complete assembly of X and Y chromosomes

Author(s)
Justin Wagner, Nathanael Olson, Jennifer McDaniel, Lindsay Harris, Chunlin Xiao, Fritz Sedlazeck, Kishwar Shafin, Andrew Carroll, Justin Zook
The sex chromosomes contain complex, important genes impacting medical phenotypes, but differ from the autosomes in their ploidy and large repetitive regions

The Application of Digital PCR as a Reference Measurement Procedure to Support the Accuracy of Quality Assurance for Infectious Disease Molecular Diagnostic Testing

Author(s)
Samreen Falak, Denise O'Sullivan, Megan Cleveland, Simon Cowen, Eloise Busby, Alison Devonshire, Esmeralda Valiente, Gerwyn Jones, Martin Kammel, Mojca Milavec, Laura Vierbaum, Ingo Schellenberg, Heinz Zeichhardt, Andreas Kummrow, Peter Vallone, Rainer Macdonald, Jim Huggett
Background Nucleic Acid Amplification Tests (NAATs) are used to diagnose many infectious diseases. They are typically sensitive and specific and can be quickly

Software

AutoDimer logo

AutoDimer

The web-based AutoDimer software was developed to rapidly screen previously selected PCR primers for primer-dimer and hairpin interactions in short DNA