A collaboration between IMEC, a Flemish research center, and Panasonic has led to the development of a new PCR chip that automatically and quickly detects SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) in whole blood. Current methods take hours, but the new system can do 30 temperature cycles in 9 minutes.
The system also makes preprocessing a thing of the past, since blood and chemicals are mixed together inside the chip. This makes the device an excellent candidate for future point-of-care testing for genetic diseases and will hopefully bring prices down for such testing.
More from DigInfo TV: DNA testing chip delivers results in one hour, paves way for personalized drug treatments…