oa An Efficient Non-invasive Sample Collection For Various Population Segments

Deciphering genomes/proteomes at a personal level will not only help in identifying hereditary predisposing factors but also contribute to designing drugs with higher efficacies at the personal level. However, to arrive at this level of understanding we need to collect data in communities locally and globally. One of the major problems we face to achieve such objectives is volunteer recruitment for sample collection. Non-invasive sample collection represents the best option over blood in many ways: 1- Better volunteer compliance 2- No cold chain involvement for transport and storage 3- Self -collection and does not require expertise On the other hand, current non-invasive collection methods suffer from low DNA yields, quality and usability for the different segments of the population. Our innovative contribution with the iSWAB is focused towards simplifying non-invasive collection and thus increasing volunteer compliance while achieving high quality and yields of gDNA sufficient for several assays. In addition, the iSWAB design results in reduced sample processing time and cost in the lab, therefore allowing more samples to be processed per assay contributing to increased cost efficiencies for downstream high content genomic analysis.