Applied DNA Announces Continued Momentum in COVID-19 Testing Demand

Applied DNA Sciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: APDN) (the “Company”), a leader in Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)-based DNA manufacturing and nucleic acid-based technologies, announced today that its wholly-owned clinical laboratory subsidiary, Applied DNA Clinical Labs (ADCL), has seen COVID-19 testing levels increase greater than 90% (unaudited) for the quarter ended December 31, 2021, compared to the fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2021. ADCL has also seen a further strengthening of demand since the quarter ended December 31, 2021, to date. ADCL attributes the increase in demand to current safeCircle clients seeking to safely reopen or increase activities at municipalities, campuses, and businesses and the on-boarding of new clients. ADCL’s safeCircle program is a fully integrated testing platform for enterprise and educational institutions that provides a full range of COVID-19 diagnostic testing and associated services, including sample collection, test site infrastructure design and management, results tracking, and vaccination status management.

safeCircle’s sales prospects have also increased in number as enterprises seek to put into place managed COVID-19 testing practices to mitigate impacts and other risks to business continuity and to prepare themselves for further development of the COVID-19 pandemic and its possible scenarios.

ADCL also announced that it secured a testing subcontract to service a municipal COVID-19 testing award. Under the testing subcontract, ADCL is testing COVID-19 samples provided by multiple community-based pop-up collection sites.

Dr. James A. Hayward, president and CEO of Applied DNA, stated, “Our approach to COVID-19 testing remains strategic whereby we are focused on market segments in which we expect testing to be longer-lived. We have proved the safeCircle platform in our operating area and are moving to deploy it nationally with the imminent filing of a request for EUA to the FDA for our Linea 2.0 COVID-19 Assay and an associated unsupervised, at-home sample collection kit.”

About Applied DNA Sciences

Applied DNA is commercializing LinearDNA, its proprietary, large-scale polymerase chain reaction (“PCR”)-based manufacturing platform that allows for the large-scale production of specific DNA sequences.

The LinearDNA platform has utility in the nucleic acid-based in vitro diagnostics and preclinical nucleic acid-based drug development and manufacturing market. The platform is used to manufacture DNA for customers as components of in vitro diagnostic tests and for preclinical nucleic acid-based drug development in the fields of adoptive cell therapies (CAR T and TCR therapies), DNA vaccines (anti-viral and cancer), RNA therapies, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) based therapies, and gene therapies.