Design of a Portable Buoyancy Driven PCR Thermocycler

Case Number: 2418TEES06


Applications:
Detection of hereditary diseases
Identification of Genetic fingerprints
Diagnosis of infectious diseases
Cloning of genes
Paternity testing


Description of Invention:
     The Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which is used for amplifying specific regions of a DNA strand, is carried out in a thermocycler. The thermocycler heats and cools the reaction tubes within it to precise temperatures required at each step of the chemical reaction. The timescales required to perform the typical amplification currently remain relatively slow. These timescales are not due to reaction kinetics, but are a result of the highly inefficient design of the conventional thermocycling hardware that remains fundamentally the same as it was 20 years ago.
     TAMUS 2418 is a novel thermocycling system capable of performing high-speed DNA amplification via the PCR in a simplified, inexpensive and portable format. The advantageous features of this technology include an inexpensive hardware platform which can be build for approximately $10(compared to the estimated cost of $2500 in 2004), timescales of the order of 10-20 minutes (presently over 1 hour), no moving parts, no external fluid transport beyond sample loading and unloading, requires little or no modification to existing reaction protocols, portability and small size (using 2 AA batteries). It is ideally suitable for performing PCR based assays in situations where a yes-no result is desired and an extensive laboratory infrastructure is lacking.

Inventors:
Victor M. Ugaz
Nitin Agrawal
Chemical Engineering
Texas Engineering Experiment Station

Contact:
Dudley E. Houghton
Licensing Manager
Office of Technology Commercialization
1700 Research Parkway, Suite 250
College Station, TX 77845
Email: d-houghton@tamu.edu
Phone: 979-862-4892

Taxonomy: Human Health Care, Medical Devices, Instrumentation and Testing, Instruments
Status: Exclusive Option

CONTACT INFORMATION
Contact by Email (Clicking this link will open a contact form in a popup window. If you have problems viewing the form, try disabling your popup blocker software.)