Roche launches new system to spot rare and emerging disease mutations

Swiss drug major Roche announced on Tuesday the launch of a digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR system) to help better understand the nature of a patient's cancer, genetic disease or infection.

The Digital LightCycler System will be available in 15 countries worldwide in 2022 with plans to be launched into more countries in the near future. The system will be CE-marked, affirming the good's conformity with European health.

Digital LightCycler System is Roche's first digital PCR system. The new next-generation diagnostics platform, which detects disease, is designed to accurately quantify trace amounts of specific DNA and RNA targets not typically detectable by conventional PCR methods.

The system is designed for laboratories performing highly sensitive and precise DNA and RNA analysis in areas such as oncology and infectious diseases.

It will allow clinical researchers to divide DNA and RNA from an already extracted clinical sample into as many as 100,000 microscopic individual reactions. The system can then perform PCR and produce highly sophisticated data analysis on the results.