Industry case by SciLifeLab:
Rarity Bioscience and SciLifeLab are collaborating to advance superRCA, a powerful tool for nucleic acid detection. The technique, initially a Technology Development Project at SciLifeLab, improves existing genetic technologies to enhance precision in identifying cancer mutations. Using expertise and equipment available at SciLifeLab Clinical Genomics, Rarity Bioscience can retrospectively test superRCA, a crucial step in its development.
The startup company Rarity Bioscience is built on research by Lei Chen, then Ph.D. student in the research group of SciLifeLab co-founder Ulf Landegren at the Department of Immunology, Genetics and Pathology at Uppsala University. The goal was to combine the already successful padlock probe and rolling circle amplification techniques in a manner that further increases sensitivity in detecting mutations.
“We have spun out from Ulf’s department to commercialize the technology known as superRCA. This technology uses padlock probes and rolling circle amplification to create one large cluster of DNA for each detected target DNA molecule,” says Linus Bosaeus, CEO of Rarity Bioscience. “With its extreme sensitivity, superRCA can detect rare mutated DNA molecules in a sample. One of its applications is in detecting relapse or persistence of leukemic disease. It allows us to detect the presence of diseased or mutated cells among a large pool of healthy cells, with high precision,” he says.
Learn how the superRCA technique enables precision medicine, in SciLifeLabs article here!
