The ability to detect a range of viral infections is another key advantage of this approach. “We essentially have coopted in the assay the host response to a broad spectrum of potential viruses,” added Ginsburg, director of genomic medicine at the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy. “If there were an outbreak somewhere tomorrow, at least hypothetically, we could use this assay to screen the population to know who had contact or were infected with that virus, without necessarily needing to know what that virus is.”