Gene profiles from living blood

System is designed to improve gene expression analyses involving whole blood samples, addressing key challenges in obtaining accurate gene expression profiles from living blood tissue

Applied Biosystems announces the introduction of the Tempus blood RNA tubes, an evacuated blood collection tube containing a reagent that stabilises large quantities of high quality RNA and expression profiles for up to five days at room temperature, allowing both isolation and transportation of the collected blood.

This product addresses a key challenge for clinical and basic researchers measuring changes in expression profiles that are reflective of a disease state or metabolic process, treatment regime, or therapeutic intervention.

Whole blood is a living tissue, and when drawn into standard evacuated collection tubes, continues to undergo metabolic processes, such as changes in expression profiles of a number of important gene targets.

Some genes change their expression levels by as much as 50-fold in less than one hour at room temperature.

For clinical or basic researchers measuring these changes, they require that the expression profiles must be frozen the instant the patient's blood is drawn to obtain a precise snapshot of the underlying expression profile.

By doing so, clinical researchers can accurately evaluate the progress of disease states, response to treatment, or drug toxicity.

In addition, the expression profile must be stabilised over a number of days to allow for transportation from the site of blood extraction to the site of RNA purification and expression analysis.

"Because of the complexity of human blood composition and the fact that this living tissue continues to undergo metabolic processes after it is drawn, stabilizing expression profiles has been a particular challenge for researchers studying gene expression," said Michael Hunkapiller, president of Applied Biosystems.

"Furthermore, clinical research studies often require multiple blood draws over time and at multiple centers, making the reproducibility of results critical.

"The Tempus system provides a cost-effective and simple way to overcome these challenges and preserve the integrity of blood samples for more accurate gene expression analysis"." Tempus blood RNA tubes are said to offer higher performance than existing products in the marketplace by yielding higher quantities of quality RNA with greater reproducibility.

Additionally, the sample preparation protocol is easy to use and can be performed quickly with a minimal amount of required steps.

The new blood tubes are a key component of an integrated system for gene expression analysis, which includes the ABI Prism 6100 nucleic acid PrepStation and consumables that isolate and stabilise total RNA from whole blood for analysis on gene expression systems.

These systems include the Applied Biosystems Expression Array system and the 7300, 7500, and ABI Prism 7900HT real-time PCR systems.

Tempus bood RNA tbes are manufactured by Greiner Bio-One, a supplier of blood collection tubes, specimen collection devices, and accessories under the brand name Vacuette for the clinical market.

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