eGene's HDA-GT12 System Used By City Of Hope National Medical Center For Automated HLA Genotyping For Genetic

Irvine, CA - eGene Inc., developer of a revolutionary high-performance genetic analysis technology, announced that HLA Laboratory in City of Hope National Medical Center (City of Hope, Calif.) has used eGene's HDA-GT12 System for automated HLA genotyping for matching of bone marrow transplants.

"We are using eGene's automated HDA-GT12 genetic analyzer that replaces our current manual agarose gel electrophoresis process for high-resolution HLA SSP (sequence specific primer) genotyping," said Dr. David Senitzer, the director of the HLA Laboratory. "This highly sensitive system only consumes less than one microliter of DNA samples for each analysis and drastically reduces biohazardous waste. It eliminates tedious manual pipetting process of thousands of DNA samples into agarose gels in our daily routine work and provides high-quality images of digital data from sample handling to data management. eGene provides a great opportunity to increase the use of automation for high-resolution HLA genotyping, which has been our goal for the future of HLA genotyping."

Ming S. Liu, CEO of eGene, noted: "HLA genotyping is urgently needed for cancer treatment since it provides bone marrow matching information. It is exciting to provide HLA genotyping application with our HDA-GT12 System. I think our compact, automated high throughput digital genetic analyzer can transform the current manual HLA genotyping process using traditional gel electrophoresis into an automatic new era."

"I believe our HDA system could be adopted easily in many laboratories doing HLA genotyping work," he continued. "We have also seen increased demand for genotyping work in the field of molecular diagnostics, and more users are integrating our HDA-GT12 system in their routine genotyping analysis," Dr. Liu said.

The HDA-GT12 Genetic Analyzer is in use at more than 100 hospitals and research centers worldwide. The system analyzes the genetic fingerprints of living organisms through microsatellites, AFLP and RFLP. It performs fast DNA sample screening and high-resolution DNA fragment analysis (2-5bp). The system also analyzes the quality and quantity of total RNA and cRNA, determines the efficiency of cRNA and cDNA amplification reactions and ensures quality of fragmented cRNA. The company sells cartridges that are specific to the type of analysis to be performed. All data is then received in digital form for appropriate transmission and storage.

SOURCE: eGene Inc.