MENLO PARK, CALIF.

Clear Labs, the only automated and intelligent NGS platform purpose-built for food safety testing, today announced a North American distribution agreement with Oxford Nanopore. Clear Labs’ flagship product Clear Safety will leverage Oxford Nanopore’s GridION DNA sequencing technology. Paired with Clear Safety’s bioinformatics platform and robotics automation, the GridION technology will help Clear Safety deliver quick turn-around time on high-volume pathogen testing along with 99.99% accuracy in identifying pathogen absence or presence.

Foodborne contaminants cause 9.4M illnesses in the United States each year; the average recall costs food manufacturers $15M per incident on average. Salmonella alone causes 1 million of these illnesses.

With Clear Safety, Clear Labs has created a uniquely powerful software and hardware stack to reduce risk and meet the needs of food safety professionals. At the hardware level, Clear Labs leverages industry-leading robotics technology to create a fully-automated system from start to finish. For DNA sequencing, Clear Safety relies on Oxford Nanopore’s GridION device, which uses nanopore sequencing technology to test samples for pathogens and other contaminants. Layered on top is Clear Labs’ proprietary bioinformatics software that provides faster reporting and data analytics on samples and sites, helping customers reduce risk, identify serotypes faster than ever, and react quickly to pathogen outbreaks.

“We are at an exciting juncture in food safety where we’re able to combine the best-in-class in hardware, software, and testing methodologies,” said Sasan Amini, CEO of Clear Labs. “The technology stack we’ve built at Clear Labs is designed specifically with our customers’ needs in mind, with a focus on speed and accuracy at every step.”

A compact desktop DNA/RNA sequencing device, Oxford Nanopore’s GridION is also uniquely suited for on-demand, cost-efficient analyses. It requires only simple library preparation and offers real-time analysis that fits seamlessly with Clear Labs’ automation and robotics systems. The GridION allows Clear Labs’ customers to accelerate time-to-insight and therefore time-to-decision.

For example, Clear Safety is able to test for the presence/absence of pathogens and conduct serotyping analysis simultaneously – and in about 24 hours – thus avoiding the standard delay of 3-5 days and the associated inventory holding costs.

“We are excited to partner with Clear Labs to expand the use of our technology in the food safety sector,” said Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore Technologies. “When they approached us about leveraging GridION in Clear Safety, we saw a unique opportunity to meet a critical business need in the industry – a fast turn-around and the ability to fit into a completely automatic system. Congratulations to Clear Labs for setting a new standard for rapid food safety testing.”

The Clear Safety platform is comprised of the most advanced sequencing technology, robust bioinformatics, and the world’s largest molecular food database. In addition to Clear Safety, Clear Labs supports testing for authenticity, GMO, and microbiome testing.

The platform’s unprecedented level of automation and robotics reduces both labor and errors, and Clear Labs’ AI and machine learning provide trends, environmental monitoring, and predictive risk assessments.

Clear Labs has over 40 customers globally, including many of the leading food brands and service labs around the world.

To learn more about Clear Safety, please visit: https://www.clearlabs.com/.

About Clear Labs

Driven by a mission to safen the global food supply, Clear Labs is the only automated and intelligent NGS platform purpose-built for food safety testing.

Clear Labs enables major brands to capitalize on a new era of food safety technologies by advancing DNA sequencing, bioinformatics, and robotics to create preventative food safety management systems.

We enable multi-target analysis of pathogens through all desired forms of molecular characterization at lower cost and with greater accuracy.

The world’s largest food brands are already realizing the advantages of Clear Labs’ platform. Our goal is to raise the standard for the way food is tested and analyzed before it is consumed by billions of people each day.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.clearlabs.com/.