The Medicines and Healthcare Product Regulatory Authority laboratories at South Mimms are part of an Arms Length Body of the UK Government. The laboratories prepare, curate, and distribute globally reference materials, including WHO International Standards. The JMF participated in a recently published study, testing amplicon and metagenome analysis workflows on WHO Gut Microbiome Analysis Reference Standard Materials. This multi-lab study confirmed the high specificity, sensitivity and quality of our in-house developed highly multiplexed dual barcoding amplicon sequencing workflow and analysis pipeline in a direct comparison against other commercial and scientific workflows.

The full open access publication is available here: doi.org/10.1128/msystems.00466-25