微流控芯片数字PCR技术及临床应用前景

Microfluidic chip digital PCR technology and its clinical application

微流控芯片数字PCR采用微流控芯片，将PCR反应液分割成数量众多且体积相等的反应单元，通过检测扩增后荧光信号呈阳性的反应单元的数量对核酸模板进行定量，具有可绝对定量、灵敏度高等优点。在感染性疾病诊断、肿瘤早期诊断、产前诊断等多个领域显示出巨大的应用前景，已有多家公司相继推出各自产品。相信随着技术的进步和新产品的出现，其应用范围将不断扩展，有望成为新一代的基因诊断工具。（中华检验医学杂志，2015，38：592－594）

Microfluidics-based digital PCR depends on microfluidic chip to split PCR reaction mixture into many tiny equal-volume units.Quantitative assessment of target DNA template can be obtained by counting the number of fluorescence-positive units after thermocycling.Microfluidics-based digital PCR exhibits many advantages including absolute quantification, high sensitivity and accuracy, and shows great promise in a variety of applications, such as infectious diseases diagnose, early cancer detection and prenatal diagnose. There are already several microfludics-based digital PCR products produced from sereval companies.It is believed that as the technology improves, microfluidics-based digital PCR will find broader applications and become the next-generation tool for genetic tests.