Stilla Technologies
A few weeks back Biorad announced that they are going to acquire Stilla Technologies for $275M.
Stilla Technologies is a ddPCR company, but their approach has a few of novel aspects.
dPCR
dPCR is broadly marketed as qPCR but better. As the name suggests PCR is… a chain reaction. qPCR monitors this amplification process, producing rapidly increasing amplification curves:
Unlike qPCR, dPCR gives a single molecule readout (using amplified material).
It does this by isolating single DNA fragments to individual reaction vessels before amplification. Typically individual droplets.
Amplified material can then be detected on a droplet-by-droplet basis. But rather than a continuous measurement/threshold cycle you are simply measuring “amplification”/”no amplification” on a droplet-by-droplet basis.
By counting droplets, and applying some poisson statistics you can quantify the number of target molecules in a sample.
Stilla - Droplet Arrays
Typically a ddPCR system needs three instruments, for example in Biorad’s system:
A droplet generator
A thermal cycler (to do the PCR in the droplets)
A droplet reader
Here droplet detection works by flowing droplets part a detector:
The Stilla instrument combines these processes, building the system around droplet arrays: