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Microbial identification has traditionally two components:
- Enrichment by culture
This has been in use for over half a century for a limited number of organisms, but is being slowly replaced by nucleic acid amplification technologies such as PCR
- Organism Identification
Phenotypic expression methods (colony characteristics, organism staining reactions/shape/size, biochemical reactions etc.) have distinct limitations. Newer identification methods such as ELISA and DNA probes are being used to only a limited degree as they too have practical drawbacks.
All these methods are slower and less accurate than identification by DNA sequencing. The well known superiority of DNA sequencing for pathogen identification has not been previously commercialized due to the high cumulative cost of performing a separate test for each of the pathogens that could be the cause of a particular infection. MultiGEN technology finally allows the cost-effective use of DNA sequencing to screen for and conclusively identify one or multiple pathogens, and all in the same test on existing instrumentation.
- From a laboratory perspective MultiGEN technology possesses a number of distinct advantages:
- Highest possible accuracy of DNA sequencing
- Low detection limits
- Built in features that minimize false negatives and false positives
- Test panels that detect all the important pathogens causing common infectious syndromes
- Results available the same working day
- Less cost than the cumulative cost of present methods
- Off-the-shelf instrumentation
- Easy to apply test protocols
- High throughput capacity
- Detection of both dead and alive pathogens, making sample quality less significant
- Use in tracking genetic drift/shift for molecular epidemiologic studies e.g. tracking ‘Super Bugs’ within an institution
MultiGEN Diagnostics offers transforming technology that is destined to become the new benchmark for the investigation of infectious disease.