NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Circulomics announced today that it has received a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop its Nanobind DNA and RNA isolation technology for formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded (FFPE) samples.
The one-year grant, which began on Sept. 1, is worth $224,338.
According to the company, the Nanobind technology is based on inexpensive thermoplastic material containing a hierarchical structure of microscale folds topped by nanoscale wrinkles, which create a high surface area silica substrate that can bind and release large amounts of high molecular weight DNA and RNA without fragmenting it.
Nanobind-isolated DNA and RNA, the company stated in its grant abstract, has an integrity on par with phenolchloroform extraction, but are obtained through a process simpler than beads and spin columns.
With the NIH funding, Circulomics aims to develop a method to extract RNA-free DNA from FFPE samples and modify the extraction protocols for obtaining DNA-free RNA. The company will validate the Nanobind approach for molecular profiling by performing methylation, mutation, and microRNA analysis using qMSP, qPCR, and RT-qPCR, and comparing its performance to commercial column-extracted DNA and RNA.