Singapore firm develops portable test-kit for H1N1 flu

Source: Xinhua | 05-13-2009 13:55

SINGAPORE, May 13 (Xinhua) -- A Singapore life sciences company has developed a portable test-kit which can identify, from the sequence perspective, the variant strain of H1N1 virus within two hours.

The test-kit, which named Vereflu, is a lab-on-chip application for rapid detection of all major influenza types at the point of need, the producing company Veredus Laboratories told Xinhua in a written interview recently.

"VereFlu is a molecular diagnostic test that integrates onto a biochip both Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and microarray technology." said Daniel Floerke, the sales and marketing director for Veredus.

Explaining the principle of the VereFlu, Floerke said, "When simplified, it is to take a throat swab from a suspected case and isolate the DNA/RNA."

"This DNA/RNA sample size is a very small amount of material, so before you can test the sample, you need to increase its size or copy number. This is done by using the molecular biology technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), which can increase your sample size (DNA/RNA) into the millions of copies," said Floerke.

"For VereFlu, we run it across a microarray that is, basically speaking, a library of DNA/RNA for just influenza. When a sample finds its match in the library, we know we have a match for that strain of influenza," he added.