Vetgenomics has obtained an american grant a patent related to a novel approach for detecting target DNA sequences based on an electroquemical method

VETGENOMICS, SL company, an international leader in diagnosis and research in "One Health" with expertise in genomics, pathogens and microbiome has obtained the American grant of the patent "METHODS FOR DETECTING TARGET DNA SEQUENCES" (Patent number US 10,415,100) based on electrochemical detection of target DNA sequences. It has been developed in collaboration with the Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors group of the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia, led by Professor Arben Merkoçi, on behalf of the European project POC4PETS (FP7-BSG-SME) aimed at providing Point of Care technologies for the detection of pathogens in pets.

Infectious diseases are one of the major global threats: they can have implications in human health and pets play an important role as disease reservoirs. Accurate identification of the causative organism is time-critical making relevant the development of an inexpensive and reliable direct parasite detection system to be used at the clinician or where an outbreak is occurring.

The invention relates a novel methodology for detecting target DNA sequences in a fully integrated waythat combines isothermal amplification with a sensitive electrochemical detection based on the use of gold nanoparticles and magnetic beads. As a proof of concept we have used Leishmania infantum detection since the dog is the main reservoir for this parasite that causes a visceral human leishmaniosis form and it is also the domestic animal most severely affected by the parasite itself.