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Multiplex, Multiplex, Multiplex.

Date: 03 Feb 2010
Member: Jason Garner

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Luminex revamping technology with FAST - there's a thought.
No, I'm not remotely connected with Luminex and I'm not paid to blather aimlessly about Luminex products.

Man, everyone and their brother is still trying to reinvent the venerable PCR. Yeah, yeah I know people all over the globe are gassing about this technology or that. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting any printed material festooned by giant artsy ads announcing the greatest thing since sliced bread. We even have multiplexes for Point of Care, so even the orderlies (are they still called orderlies?) can run it. Now, I'm the first to rally around new toys, but they often end up no more than the flavor of the month.

For detection and diagnostics, my money is still on real-time PCR and in particular it's big brother, Luminex. Believe me, I've met the detractors who've whined about the number of steps, cost of reagents, and the 8-9 hours it takes to go from extraction to results. Hard to argue with those gripes, but for those who use it correctly, i.e. what it was designed to do, it is by far the most sensitive (and powerful) technology for the molecular diagnostic crowd.

To their credit, Luminex has revamped their technology with an all-inclusive RVP kit (yes, includes all ancillaries except Takara's "Hot Start"), a less complex and user friendly protocol contributing to slicing turn-around times in half. It is simply called "FAST". Very apt and it is currently before the FDA. I'll be one of the first in line.

While no connection, I also believe that the darkhorse technology we soon won't be able to overlook is micro arrays.

jlg

Last Updated on 03 Feb 2010

Comments (2)

(4)

by Jason Garner

Good points Agnieszka. Within a clinical context, you're right, these technologies tend to produce information over load and end up being superfluous data. However, in the public health surveillance and/or research arenas, these provide the most bang for the buck.

I also agree, there's not much arguing with sequencing, but Sanger-based or chain-termination technologies (e.g. ABI) still tend to be very expensive. Pyrosequencing technology (Qiagen/Biotage, 454 LS) on the other hand is far more cost effective, depending on what you use it for.

by Agnieszka Lichanska

I think that microarrays are getting there slower than we would have thought. The problem to me is that they generally give more results than standard methods and clinicians want to have.

The years of working with PCR and real time PCR make me a bit sceptical about their real value for diagnostics. Pathogen detection or genetic disorder identification is much more accurate with sequencing technologies. These are getting better too and I would say that that is where the future will go.