TriLink Awarded Phase II Grant for Start PCR Project

TriLink BioTechnologies has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant of approximately $750,000 to continue its investigation of modified primers to improve the fidelity of PCR reactions.

Phase I studies demonstrated that TriLink's modified primers not only significantly reduced products due to undesired priming, but also enhanced the formation of the desired amplicon in a number of different experiments.

In the second phase of the program, TriLink will look to further improve these Phase I study results by expanding the technology to offer solutions for qPCR, RT-PCR and multiplex PCR and qPCR.

TriLink will also optimize protocols for scale up and automated synthesis, in preparation for commercialization of the technology in early 2007. This is the second Phase II grant TriLink has been awarded.

"We believe that this discovery has the potential to be a very important advancement in PCR technology," said Dr. Richard Hogrefe, CEO and President of TriLink.

"This invention will alleviate the need for extensive primer design efforts and will offer a solution for those designing complicated PCR assays."

"We are hopeful that this technology will provide the diagnostic community access to a number of clinically relevant targets for which the development of PCR based assays has been problematic."