By Ben Butkus

DNA Electronics will begin pre-clinical pilot trials later this year to prepare its rapid, handheld, semiconductor-based DNA testing platform for clinical diagnostic use, the company said this week.

To that end, the London-based company will collaborate with the lab of Eric Topol at Scripps Research Institute in the area of pharmacogenetic analysis for Plavix response; and with an unspecified lab at St. Mary's University College in London in the area of infectious disease testing, PCR Insider has learned.

PCR Insider spoke with DNA Electronics CEO Chris Toumazou and CTO Leila Shepherd this week following the company's announcement that it had inked an agreement granting skincare company GeneOnyx access to its point-of-care genetic testing device, called Genalysis, to provide rapid, over-the-counter genetic testing to consumers for the purposes of recommending genetically tailored cosmetic products.

The deal with GeneOnyx is the "first significant license" for DNA Electronics' testing platform, but is just the tip of the iceberg, Toumazou said, as the company is now in the throes of honing the platform for in vitro diagnostics use.

"We've been in stealth mode, and we're excited that [Genalysis] is working now," Toumazou said. "The key objective still is to tackle the healthcare and clinical market. But in the past year there has been all this hype about handheld genetic devices, but we don't know anything to date that actually works. We wanted to make sure the world sees that we have something that works, and works well, so we're applying it to a setting that can demonstrate that. That's why we decided to partner with GeneOnyx."

DNA Electronics' current molecular diagnostics work actually brings the company full circle to its earliest days, when it spun out of Imperial College London to commercialize the discovery that when nucleotide pairs come together during DNA synthesis, they release hydrogen ions, which can be detected as an electrical signal on a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor, or CMOS chip.

"We patented that idea, and we spun out DNA Electronics in 2002 with aspirations from the very beginning to create a handheld diagnostic technology," Toumazou said. But, he added, the company first applied the technology "to what [we thought] was the really growing field, which was DNA sequencing."

As a result, DNA Electronics negotiated first a non-exclusive license with Ion Torrent, which adopted the technology as part of its next-generation sequencing platform now called the PGM and sold by Life Technologies, which acquired Ion Torrent in late 2010. After that deal, DNA Electronics then forged a partnership with Roche 454 to integrate the technology into a competing sequencing platform.

"While all that was taking place, which was really a good way of bringing in revenues, we had a team incubating our holy grail, which was this microchip-based diagnostic device," Toumazou said.

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DNAe Plans Pilot Trials of Handheld Semiconductor DNA Testing Platform for PGx, Infectious Disease

ST. LOUIS A jailhouse scuffle last year left Jimmy Love-El with some bumps, some bruises and a mistrial in the double homicide case against him.

The fight may have been his lucky break.

A circuit court judge called off the trial on its third day on concerns that injuries from the fight, involving a friend of one of the victims, could prejudice the jury.

In the time since, DNA evidence has surfaced that Love-El's attorneys say support his defense that someone else shot two men Jan. 11, 2009, in a Schnucks parking lot during a drug deal gone bad.

The DNA hit matching a convicted drug offender to a cup found in the car where the two men were killed is contentious for another reason. A St. Louis police detective didn't disclose the DNA result for four months after he was notified of it, leaving the defense to hear of the evidence just four days before the retrial. As a result, that trial has been pushed back. Love-El remains in jail, waiting to see how the DNA test will affect his case.

The episode has prompted a mea culpa from police, with a promise of better procedures going forward to inform defendants of evidence that could help them.

THE CRIME

Prosecutors argued in the interrupted trial in June 2011 that Love-El killed Dewon Curry and Archie White because he was a drug user who needed a fix.

Curry, 23, and White, 22, were parked outside the Schnucks store in the 3400 block of Union Boulevard when Love-El allegedly pulled in around 6:30 p.m. They wanted $1,200 for an ounce of crack cocaine, but Love-El found a way to get it for free, prosecutors said.

They alleged that he climbed into the back seat of the victims' Mercury Marquis, pulled out a gun and shot each man in the head. He took their cellphones and drugs but accidentally left behind a brown glove that testing would show contained his DNA, officials said.

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After mistrial, DNA factors into double-murder case

Can this USB stick change biology research? Photo: Oxford Nanopore

What if you could put a few bacterial cells into a USB stick, plug it into your laptop, and get back a complete DNA sequence in a matter of minutes?

Oxford Nanopore has built a USB device that will do just that. At least, thats what the company says. Known as MinION, the device received a hefty amount of press when it was announced in February, and its slated for release to the world at large in the second half of the year. But many are still skeptical that this tiny device will do what its designed to do.

If [the claims] are true, wed buy it tomorrow, Jonathan Eisen, a microbiology professor at the University of California at Davis. But Im reserving judgment. Weve heard many presentations from companies where these things dont pan out.

Clive Brown, Oxfords chief technology officer, tells Wired that the MinION works as advertised. You put a handful of lysed cells cells whose membranes have been dissolved into a small container built into the USB drive. You plug the drive into an ordinary PC. And depending on the length of the DNA in those cells, youll have a complete sequence in somewhere between a few minutes to a few hours. The device is the result of seven years of research, Brown says, and it sells for $900.

For Eisen, the cost alone would make the MinION a game changer. But its also attractive because its portable. Eisen says that with a device like the MinION, field researchers would have sequencing at their fingertips at all times, whether theyre on a remote mountain somewhere or out at sea looking at algae blooms. This really would be the democratization of sequencing, he says. Anyone in any research environment would consider doing large scale sequencing in their project.

But he still wants to see it action before he says any more.

In biological research, the order of DNAs four building blocks called base pairs is essential to understanding the underlying mechanisms of an organisms existence. Short for deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA along with a handful of supporting molecules dictates the protein structures and development of every creature on the planet. DNA length varies by organism ranging from the thousands of basepairs for bacteria to billions for mammals so tools that quickly read this molecular instruction manual are imperative for biological research.

Oxford aims for DNA sequencing in the wild. Image: Frank Kehren/Flickr

The market for DNA sequencing is a crowded one. Companies such as Illumina and Sequetech build large machines that sit alongside a lab bench, and Ion Torrent, a subsidiary of Life Technologies, will soon release a benchtop sequencer that it says will read the entire human genome roughly three billion base pairs in a day. But Oxford is the first to put this sort of device on an ordinary laptop.

Link:
Can You Really Sequence DNA With a USB Thumb Drive?