With Support from the National Institute of New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO), HORIBA Biotechnology Drastically Reduces the Time Required to Detect Protein Functions
Joint Project with Toyama University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

2004/12/02

HORIBA Biotechnology Co., Ltd. (head office: Kyoto; president: Takeshi Kono), a wholly owned subsidiary of HORIBA, Ltd. that serves as the nucleus of the HORIBA Group’s biotechnology business, has developed a new type of DNA biosensor using CCDs in a joint project with Professor Hiroaki Shinohara of the Faculty of Engineering at Toyama University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST).

The new biosensor is based on the achievements of the CCD antibody sensor developed in 2001. By attaching DNA linked to specific genes to the surface of the CCD, microscopic amounts of DNA and RNA can be detected from changes in the surface electric potential.

The detection time of conventional DNA chips is several hours, but since no preprocessing is required with the new biosensor, detection can be completed within 10 minutes. In addition, because it is a semiconductor sensor, multi-arraying is simple, making it ideal for protein interaction analysis—the key to the functional analysis of proteins.

HORIBA Biotechnology is aiming to commercialize a measurement device equipped with the new biosensor and make this device the global standard for specific gene detection and gene expression analysis.