The company stated that it has revised its conventional chip probes, utilizing sequence knowledge about the newest strain of swine flu from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) site. Many of these flu chains or sequences have been submitted worldwide during the past 96 hours.
Ocimum has also revealed that it can provide a real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) based molecular diagnostic assay for use in India and Asia. It is imperative to mention here that the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have officially sanctioned the emergency use of an RT-PCR based molecular diagnostic analysis to recognize swine flu cases in the U.S.
Microarray testing
In simple terms, microarray testing is used to test a sample of cells, so as to determine that which genes
are expressed and which genes are not expressed in that particular sample. This enables researchers to get an insight into the accurate structure of the different types of cells they want to study.
If a sample of normal healthy cells is included in the test, then those cells can be compared to the diseased cells without any difficulty. In this way, the varying differences in the form of gene expressions can be found out.
Development of microarray
Ocimum’s custom OciChip™ array platform was employed to develop the microarray (research use only). This was done three years ago when one of the first incidents of avian flu outbreak happened. But now this test has been redesigned keeping in mind the latest developments in the sequencing of the flu strain over the last week.
Anu Acharya, CEO, Ocimum Biosolutions said “Our Bioinformatics team in India has redesigned the OciChip array probes to match the latest sequence information available. The RT-PCR assay and the microarray will quickly identify the H1N1 virus in patients diagnosed with Influenza A as some older tests may not pick up this new strain.
She further added, “In a public health emergency like this, we want to make sure that we identify the right strain which is not picked up by current tests. We are ready to work with various public health labs in the India and the region that need help in setting up these assays, or running the samples in our labs.
“Pandemics of this sort need to be rapidly identified at the source so that public health officials can implement various measures to control the disease. Both these assays can be conducted in a few hours and avoids the risk of patients with suspected cases infecting others when the wait is longer.”
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