Molecular Staging Technology Can Do On-Chip Protein-Signal Amplification

NEW YORK, April 18 - An article in Nature Biotechnology this month demostrates a new protein microarray application for Molecular Staging's amplification technology.

The paper shows how the company's isothermal Rolling Circle Amplification technology can be used for on-chip protein-signal amplification.

The authors descibe a functional antibody chip that can detect 75 differnet low-abundance human cytokines, and another 51-feature dendritic cell cytokine chip.

The success of this technology shows that multiplexed protein analysis can be both technically and economically feasible, the authors claim. "RCA-amplified protein arrays allowed, for the first time, [greater than] 50 members of a family of proteins to be measured simultaneously without compromise of biologically relevant sensitivity."

Molecular Staging, of New Haven, Conn., sees RCAT as a potential replacement for PCR. Potential applications include point-mutation detection and infectious-agent diagnosis through direct detection of viral DNA or RNA.