Cell-O-Matic: High Throughput Systematic Single Cell Genomics using Micro/Nano-Fluidic Chips for Extracting, Pre-analysing, Selecting and Preparing Sequence-ready DNA
The CELL-O-MATIC project will synergize efforts from SMEs, academics and large companies to develop a new chip-based technology for processing DNA from individual cells that will enhance the quality and throughput of present and future DNA sequencing significantly. This will open up for the next generation high-throughput sequencing.
Especially in cancer management will single-cell analysis have many applications as DNA isolation and sequencing from tumour tissue and circulating tumour cells (CTC) has an important prognostic value.
A second innovation will be to develop methods that enable up to whole chromosome lengths of DNA to be contiguously mapped using nanofluidics. The inclusion of nanofluidics makes the project particularly distinctive and introduces European SMEs to an area that so far has been the domain of US companies.
The expected output of the project is the development of a modular prototype comprising a chip, fluid and thermal control, sonication and optical detection. Samples prepared using CELL-O-MATIC technology will be benchmarked in a high throughput environment with samples prepared by existing methods. Finally, the information obtained in the CELL-O-MATIC process about the sample material will be validated in a hospital for its direct utility in clinical decision making.