Suppression PCR for Improved Rare Copy Diagnostics (Brandeis Ref. 1057)

Faster, more accurate and less invasive methods for diagnosing cancer are of high interest to patients, healthcare providers, and payers. The current gold standard for guiding appropriate treatment — tumor biopsy — carries with it the significant costs and risks associated with invasive surgery while only sampling a portion of the abnormal cells. Intratumoral genetic heterogeneity is a known driver of clonal evolution, metastases, and eventual resistance to treatment so identification and analyses of key rare or low copy DNA mutations driving these changes are important for effectively managing therapy. Furthermore, because tumor cell migration often occurs through the vasculature, improved tests for analyzing metastatic and tumor cell DNA captured in the bloodstream with liquid biopsies would significantly advance oncology treatment. Current PCR-based diagnostics, however, have significant technical constraints that are inherent to their design. Nunchaku PCR of the current invention is the most user-friendly and widely-deployable suppression PCR method in existence today. With this technology, the upstream primer itself mediates selective amplification of rare sequence variants from among an abundance of a known sequence, with the same primer sites. The performance of Nunchaku suppression PCR has been proven in-vitro. We are now seeking non-exclusive licensing partnerships to develop diagnostic kits for commercializing this technology. Such fully-contained kits would have broad market reach, with potential customers in researchers, hospitals, and CLIA-approved service providers. Rajnish Kaushik Rajnish@Brandeis.edu 781-736-4220