NEW YORK (360Dx) – Comparing a new assay to a gold standard is a way to assess performance, but what if the comparator test turns out to have variability between labs or experiments? Accelerate Diagnostics reported earlier this month it has had to slightly delay the start of clinical trials for a pneumonia assay in development because the firm has discovered the gold standard culture methods, which are commonly used by microbiology labs, are too highly variable.