UoH Secures Patent For High-Throughput Molecular Diagnostics
UoH believes the approach could reduce library preparation requirements, processing time and sequencing costs.
Hyderabad:The University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Mumbai-based miBiome Therapeutics LLP secured an Indian patent for a molecular indexing method designed to scale up DNA/RNA sample processing while reducing sequencing costs.
Granted on October 12, the patent covered the invention titled “Method of Pooling Multiple Reverse Indexed DNA/RNA Samples and Adding Single Indexed Forward Primer and Application Thereof”. The application was filed on July 16, 2020.
The inventors, Prof. Sreenivasulu Kurukuti of the department of animal biology, School of Life Sciences, UoH, and Dr Gautam Das of miBiome Therapeutics, whose collaborative research initiative emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic to develop scalable, efficient and cost-effective molecular diagnostic technologies.
Prof. Kurukuti explained that the method used unique molecular barcodes to identify individual DNA/RNA samples, which were pooled and assigned an additional pool-specific barcode for processing through next-generation sequencing (NGS). “This allows individual sample identities to be retained while enabling large numbers of samples to be sequenced together.”
By reusing sample-specific indexing primers across differently indexed pools, the technology has a theoretical capacity to distinguish samples from 92,160 individuals, calculated as 96 × 960, with scope for further scaling to millions of samples, he added.
UoH believes the approach could reduce library preparation requirements, processing time and sequencing costs. Potential applications include population-scale molecular diagnostics, infectious disease surveillance, mass screening and genomic research.