PCR Kit Manufacturer

Manufacturers provide PCR kits to the different market places. Most of these kits are designed to work on one or a few brands and types of cyclers. In general, manufacturers recommend that their kit be used in combination with the cycler brand on which it was developed. Typically, when kit manufacturers get claims from customers that their kit is not always working well, they cannot reproduce the customer’s findings in their QC lab, due to the difference in cycler temperature performance.

Kit manufacturers can use DRIFTCON to determine the optimum temperature profile of their PCR kit. With DRIFTCON one can set thresholds for temperature accuracy and block uniformity (spread) within which a kit functions. In other words: determining the maximum temperature in-accuracy and spread still allowing the generation of a trustable result. Kit manufacturers may consider separating accuracy and spread settings. Different protocols for the same kit may be advised depending on the dynamic temperature performance (DRIFTCON driven) of the customer’s thermal cycler.

Users of commercial kits can request their kit supplier to provide prescribed threshold sets for temperature accuracy and block spread of the kit and/or cycler.

Threshold settings are used to compare the temperature performance of the cycler against (pre)-defined thresholds. With DRIFTCON, a kit development manager is capable to design extremely detailed threshold settings. These threshold settings are used to compare if the tested instrument is within application specifications or not. The kit manufacturer determines the test frequency of equipment and sets clear definitions whether if the threshold preference is based on application(s) or on the instrument.

Although the application thresholds are much more difficult and time consuming to design, they are superior to instrument thresholds. In other words: one is comparing if the cycler used to run an application is suitable for this application. If an end user is using a commercialised (diagnostic) kit (PCR, LCR, Real-Time PCR, RT-PCR etc) he or she may request the temperature profile thresholds from the kit manufacturer. If you, as a kit manufacturer, are not yet able to provide temperature thresholds for your kit, you may consider using our discussion forum at the specific DRIFTCON website: www.driftcon.com or (if available) join one of the application threshold settings discussion groups.

Instruments thresholds settings (for a specific instrument and block type) are provided with the purchase of a DRIFTCON system. Other individual specific threshold settings may be purchased as software “ad on” (option). The provided specific instruments thresholds are extracted from the global database, which contains measurements from the same brand and type of machine. The provide threshold values are mean values plus or minus 2 x the standard deviation of the values (equals 95% of the population)