Thermo Scientific’s Plasma XS kit made available in UK

Thermo Scientific is bringing its Machery-Nagel NucleoSpin Plasma XS kit to the UK market.

Described by the firm as "ideal" for use in research and drug discovery applications for cancer, NucleoSpin Plasma XS has been designed to facilitate the rapid isolation of fragmented DNA from human EDTA blood plasma.

The increased presence of such DNA particles can indicate cancer as well as autoimmune diseases, certain foetal disorders and bacterial or viral infections.

"Circulating DNA is known to be highly fragmented and typically low in concentration, which has traditionally created difficulties in terms of purification when using conventional kits," explained Valentina Janusic, product life cycle manager at Thermo Fisher Scientific.

"The new NucleoSpin Plasma XS kit provides a convenient and efficient way of isolating high concentrations of purified DNA from plasma samples using silica membrane technology which is known for its high reliability," Ms Janusic added.

To overcome the limitations of conventional kits the NucleoSpin Plasma XS uses a thrust ring in a special funnel design that allows standard mini prep spin columns to hold a silica membrane of very small diameter.