ABOVE: Andrew Brooks photographed in April 2020 at the RUCDR Infinite Biologics soon after the Rutgers COVID-19 saliva test received emergency approval from the FDA.
NICK ROMANENKO
Andrew Brooks, a molecular neuroscientist who developed the first COVID-19 saliva test to receive emergency use authorization by the US Food and Drug Administration, died on January 23 of a heart attack. He was 51.
In the early days of the pandemic, when testing resources such as swabs and reagents were scarce, Brooks’s saliva test offered a fast and reliable way to screen large numbers of people. The test, which he designed while head of the Rutgers-affiliated biorepository RUCDR Infinite Biologics, protected essential workers from exposure to the virus as they collected samples by doing away with the need for technicians to be on-hand to gather the fluid—people could simply spit into a cup. The FDA first authorized the test in April 2020, and ...
