NuGEN Receives Patent for Global Nucleic Acid Amplification

NuGEN Technologies, Inc. has announced that it has received US Patent No. 7,402,386, “Global amplification using random priming by a composite primer.”

The patent describes a global whole genome amplification methodology using composite DNA/RNA primers able to anneal to multiple sites within the template polynucleotide. The resulting amplified nucleic acid is suitable for use with a wide array of analytical and investigative approaches and applications.

The NuGEN proprietary technology, SPIA®, has been employed to develop and commercialize the company’s Ovation® Systems family of 3-prime and whole transcriptome RNA amplification and labeling products.

Global whole genome amplification is a new area of focus for NuGEN, which plans to expand its family of products in 2009 to include new solutions and workflows with DNA amplification.

“Our powerful and versatile core technologies are ideally suited to address technical challenges facing today’s life science researchers,” noted inventor Dr. Nurith Kurn, NuGEN co-founder and chief scientific officer, “This new technology will further enable the use of valuable and precious biological samples to accelerate the understanding of disease pathologies, and target discovery and validation.”

Doug Amorese, vice president of research and development explained, “Our expanding portfolio of technologies will strengthen the company’s product development pipeline so NuGEN can continue to bring valuable sample preparation solutions to our partners and customers while empowering new and innovative investigative approaches across the life science continuum.”