LAUSR

There is a long-standing need for rapid and sensitive detection platforms, including point-of-care tests, for a variety of viruses and bacteria. While many technologies such as PCR and others, have the potential to provide results in under 30 min, pathogen identification on these platforms actually takes many hours to complete, mostly due to the upfront sample preparation, or specifically, sample cell lysis. Lysis, the process by which a bacteria or virus is Bopened-up^ to release its genetic material, is crucial for its detection / identification, and is typically undertaken by adding a chemical cocktail to the sample (lysis buffer) accompanied by heating. This process takes several hours to complete and often involves expensive lysis buffers. Even in non-diagnostic settings such as in research laboratories, lysis is still cumbersomely performed by a great number of researchers using the age-old lysing buffer technology. To address this bottleneck of speed, cost, complexity and the fact that many laboratories employ multiple kits for routine testing, Lyse-It LLC has recently launched Lyse-itTM, a means to lyse virtually any cell, spore or virus rapidly (typically <20 s) in a single-step on a single platform, thereby enabling the genetic material (e.g. DNA) to be collected for downstream analysis on any platform. The Lyse-ItTM technology uses focused microwaves in small disposable sample chambers, which readily allow the user to lyse cellular samples with near-100% efficiency, within 20 s on a single platform at a cost less than other technologies available today. Importantly, this lysing approach is generic to a whole range of cells and viruses, i,e., is a single platform (one size fits all), unlike traditional lysing buffer approaches that all use multiple kits for different media. Given the widespread use of fluorescence spectroscopy today for cellular analysis, we envisage this new ground breaking approach will be of particular interest to users of Fluorescence.