FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
DNA Software Receives NIH SBIR Phase II Grant to Develop Advanced,
High-throughput PCR Design Software
Ann Arbor, Mich. – April
12, 2003 —The National Institute of Health (NIH)
has awarded DNA Software a Small Business Innovation Research
Program (SBIR) Phase II Grant to enhance its existing Oligonucleotide
Modeling Platform (OMP) to develop advanced, high-throughput
PCR design software.
The grant will help the company develop new
software for designing PCR in various formats based upon a rigorous
scientific and computational approach. This new software will
significantly improve the reliability of PCR and will enable
high-throughput PCR applications resulting in significant cost
savings. The developed software will include the ability to
optimize reaction conditions in silico and utilize a rigorous
equilibrium model for hybridization in order to predict the
product distribution after each step of PCR.
DNA Software’s proposal, led by Dr. Svetlana
Morosyuk, research director, and Dr. John SantaLucia, founder
and chief scientist, was classified as “Outstanding”
by its scoring committee. According to Dr. SantaLucia “We
achieved excellent results from our Phase I and the preliminary
work we’ve done on kinetics points to continued success.”
Many of the software advancements developed
through the grant will appear in DNA Software’s commercial
software prior to the expected grant completion in early 2004.
“From the start we developed OMP so that the core science
engine could be continually improved without affecting the various
interfaces we develop,” says Donald Hicks, company executive
vice president, “so already version 3 of Visual OMP, to
be released this June [2003], will benefit from the award.”
The award will fund three specific aims:
- OMP core development. Tools for optimizing
assay conditions for common PCR formats will be developed
and a kinetics simulation model will accurately predict the
product distribution at the end of thermocycling. In addition,
the ability to compute large-scale simulations will be further
extended.
- Develop a generalized GUI and internal
functionality for PCR in different formats. The graphical
user interface will be extended to support simulation and
optimization of PCR in different formats. The first templates
developed will focus on multiplex PCR, gene synthesis PCR,
real-time PCR, and mismatched-primer PCR.
- Experimental studies for kinetics parameterization
and validation of OMP for multiplex PCR and other formats.
DNA Software will collaborate with Dr. Nils Walters at
the University of Michigan to perform a systematic study of
the kinetics (time course) of PCR using the advanced fluorescence
spectroscopy and stopped-flow kinetics equipment available
in Dr. Walters lab. The company will also validate the predictions
of our software for PCR primer design with a carefully designed
series of experiments.
About DNA Software, Inc.
DNA Software, Inc. combines science and software
to enable industrial genomics through advances in technologies
based on nucleic acids. The company’s first software platform,
OMP (Oligonucleotide Modeling Platform,) models in silico
the folding and hybridization of single-stranded nucleic acids
with great accuracy. The company combines OMP with scientific
consulting, custom software development, and custom laboratory
research to deliver state-of-the-art support for designing and
developing of nucleic acid based technologies. For more information
on DNA Software, Inc., visit our website at http://www.dnasoftware.com.
CONTACT:
DNA Software, Inc.
204 East Washington Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Office: +1 (734) 222-9080
Toll-Free: +1 (877) 362-7638
Fax: +1 (734) 222-9087
Email: info@dna-software.com
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