The main research and development project of ELVESYS is FASTGENE, the technology at the heart of MULTIDET project. FASTGENE is able to carry out ultrafast thermal cycling of the sample located in a patented microscopic optofluidic chip whose temperature is controlled by a micro thermal exchanger.
In order to process biological specimens and perform analysis of their molecular and cellular contents, a prototype processing bacterial samples and performing ultrafast real-time qPCR has been designed and developed and a relative patent was filed. In order to increase the sensitivity of microorganisms’ detection, PCR conducted in gel phase has been optimized and integrated. PCR in gel phase leads to the formation of so called, molecular or polymerase colonies (polonies), where each polony is the result of the amplification of a single molecule of target DNA or RNA. This is possible because the gel limits the diffusion of nucleic acids and the amplification products remain closed to the parental molecule, forming a detectable polony.
Therefore, this technology offer the advantage of directly quantifying the amount of target genetic material present in the sample, by simply counting the number of polonies formed in the gel. Additionally, the spatial separation of polonies reduces the competition between targets and consequent mismatches, as the genetic material remains confined in a restricted space of the gel, allowing high multiplex analysis and remarkably increasing the sensitivity of molecular diagnostics conducted with this technique.
Finally, a market research was conducted, in order to identify potential customers and competitors and define market’s needs in the context of Point of Care Tests (PoCT) and, specifically, of kidney diseases diagnosis.
