Whole Genome Amplification

Case Studies

Whole Genome Amplification has been used to immortalize DNA samples from many different samples types, from a range of research and therapeutic areas including;

Human Tissue Biorepository
Human tissue and blood biorepositories often have many users requiring DNA from the collected material. These samples are often very precious rare samples from autopsy and biopsies, or collected many years previously. In this particular example, the biorepository had 10-15 users requesting DNA for genotyping and sequencing studies. WGA provided an opportunity to expand the supplies of DNA from the deleting tissue and blood collections and therefore continue research on samples which would have been deleted before WGA was available.

Human Blood Bank
In this example, the original study design did not include a provision for genetics studies. The human blood bank had 1000 very valuable, well-characterized samples from a well defined population. Only limited DNA was available from plasma. WGA allowed the amplification of high quality DNA, and made gene association studies possible from archived sample sets.

Epidemiologic Studies
As genotyping of more SNPs in large populations becomes less costly and more automated, the limiting resource will increasingly become the genetic material upon which molecular epidemiology research is built. In this example, case control studies included 100’s to 1000’s subjects. The only clinical samples available were Buccal cells. WGA amplification yielded 4-7ug of high quality DNA per reaction, and was applicable for many downstream applications including Taqman, Sequencing, RFLP and SNP Chips. Because WGA yields a product that is an accurate representation of the original genomic sequence and it is ideal for epidemiologic studies.

Target Discovery, ADR and Clinical Trials
Whole Genome Amplification has been fully validated by major biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies in a number of studies including, amplification of DNA from cancer biopsies and corresponding normal cells for target discovery, ADR studies and for genotyping in clinical trials. WGA eliminates the need to collect and process large amounts of blood as a source of DNA, and eliminates the serious problem of depletion of banked DNA during current or future genetic analysis. Starting with amounts of genomic DNA less than 100ng, WGA can be used to rapidly and accurately amplify micrograms amounts of high quality material, ready for any number of downstream applications.

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