Thermo Scientific plasma kit available through UK base

Thermo Scientific has made its new Macherey-Nagel NucleoSpin Plasma XS kit available to UK scientists through the firm’s Epsom base.

Designed to facilitate the rapid isolation of fragmented DNA from human EDTA blood plasma, the NucleoSpin Plasma XS can thereby aid the detection of cancer, 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."

"This makes it an ideal solution for routine laboratory use, assisting in research and drug discovery applications for cancer and many other serious conditions," she concluded.

Featuring an innovative column design, which allows efficient elution of samples, the kit 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.