Small-RNA Analysis Below is an illustration of the typical workflow involved in obtaining and using small-RNA from biological samples. RNA is generally very unstable and very prone to contamination when outside the organism and being handled in the laboratory. This may lead to poor yields and contaminants that can be amplified and corrupt downstream experimental steps. It is thus very challenging to extract high yields of clean RNA from cells, even more so (or impossible) from single cells. Therefore, Step 2 is one of the most critical steps of the workflow, especially for high-throughput operations. Due to the challenges outlined above, there are currently very few products for high yield RNA extraction, in comparison to steps 3 and 4, where there are several products on the market already. Most commercially available RNA extraction kits require between 10 and 20 steps, large amounts of cells (up to a minimum of 10'000 cells/well) and take about 1-2 hours. Clearly, while this kit may gets the job done, it is far from being optimal in relation to the volumes of tests carried out in high throughput operations. Ideally such a kit should have at least the following attributes: Low cell volumes/test, in order to allow for a maximum of experiments from often precious cell tissue. Speed, the faster the better, e.g. order of minutes instead of hours. High reproducibility and minimize/eliminate contamination & other processing errors - false results are very costly to the drug discovery industry. Low cost, very important when considering the very high test volumes typical in drug discovery. => Lab-on-Chip (LOC) Solution - A microfluidic device allowing various experimental procedures, which would otherwise be carried out separately (on different machines), to be combined in a single chip.
Nucliprep™ RNA Extraction Platform The RNA extraction is done by on-chip cell lysis, electrophoretic RNA separation and purification with a high yield. The central component of this platform is the RNA Extraction chip that includes microfluidics with phaseguides for defined chip priming and bubble-expulsion structures allowing to work with bubble-free electrodes. The use of a Lab-on-Chip technology allows simplification of RNA sample extraction as it requires only 3 steps to achieve and takes about 10 minutes for the overall process. Furthermore, the minimal number of cells required to get sufficient RNA for detection is in the range of 5 cells. The NucliPrep™ technology was developed at the Institute of Microsystems (IMTEK), University of Freiburg (Germany) in Prof. Gerald Urban's laboratory within the context of a European PF6 project coordinated by Ayanda Biosystems (LSHB-CT-2005-513771).
Partnering Opportunities We are open to commercial partnership propositions relating to our NucliPrep™ platform.
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