Developing diagnostic tools for measuring DNA integrity in patients at the level of individual cells.

Rapid development of personalised medicine requires creating tools for diagnostics, prediction, monitoring and assessment of therapeutic response, which will have a significant impact on clinical decisions and health outcomes. Norgenotech aims at addressing this need by releasing high throughput integrated DNA-testing instrumentation suitable for assessing the likely response of patients to chemo- and radio- therapy, evaluating the predictive value of DNA repair as a cancer risk factor, testing effects of pharmaceutical intervention and identifying individuals at risk of occupational exposure. At the heart of our technological innovation is the comet assay - a powerful method for measuring DNA integrity at the level of individual cells. We have already optimised most of the technical steps of the methodology, and are now (supported by the EC project PERMIDES) applying artificial intelligence for developing a machine-learning based algorithm for processing the resulting images. At this stage, we have designed the basic components of the novel DNA testing facility, and the next step will be to move from the research-based proof of concept phase into creating and releasing the equipment suitable for patient diagnostics and research testing projects.