History of Digital PCR: (r)evolution in genetic testing & analysis

Stilla’s webinar in collaboration with Genomeweb & University of Ghent on Wednesday 25th of September 2019  by Dr. Wim Trypsteen (University of Ghent)

Register here:

https://www.workcast.com/register?cpak=6756340196221166

Speaker’s Bio：

Dr. Wim Trypsteen is a postdoctoral researcher at Ghent University and co-coordinator of the Ghent University Digital PCR consortium which focuses on developing digital PCR assays and data analysis tools. Wim Trypsteen graduated in 2012 as Master of Biomedical Sciences, in 2017 as Bachelor in Bioinformatics and obtained his PhD in Health Sciences in 2018. During his PhD he evaluated the potential of ddPCR for HIV reservoir quantification and developed a new statistical framework for ddPCR threshold determination.

Abstract：

The commercialization of digital PCR platforms sparked a revolution in nucleic acid quantification over the past decade, shaking up the world of traditional end-point or real-time quantitative PCR. The power of digital PCR lays in the combination of limiting dilution, microfluidics, massive parallelization of individual nanoliter-scaled PCR reactions and absolute quantification via a binary readout. In the first part of this webinar, we will explain the principles behind this technology, reconstruct the historic path of this field and highlight key advantages over qPCR.

In the second part, we will discuss current major dPCR platforms, shed light on their advantages and explore the array of possible applications, including a 3-color target multiplex HIV quantification assay using the Naica™ System. The talk will be concluded with briefly pinpointing future directions of this promising new field of nucleic acid quantification and genetic analysis.