Canvax Biotech


Canvax is a leading manufacturer and supplier of the most innovative solutions, kits and R&D Reagents inside Molecular Biology fields. Since its foundation in 2001, Canvax offers reliable, cost-effective and easy-to-use innovative tools for research.

Based in Córdoba (Spain), since its beginning it has focused on R&D of multiplex high throughput platforms (HTS) for Drug discovery and Diagnostic applied biosensors. Over a decade later, Canvax is a worldwide leading expert in GPCR expression in heterologous cells, with important patents and exclusive know-how. Canvax prides itself to be the first company to get an unprecedented milestone that could revolutionize the Diagnostics sector: Canvax established stable high-level expression of odour GPCRs into heterologous cell lines in 2014.

This key milestone, that could be applied in diagnostic, perfume and cosmetic industry, are being employed to obtain a molecular nose, a sensitive and non-invasive diagnostic molecular device for early detection of cancer, as the nose of trained dogs do. Thanks to this project, Canvax was awarded, in 2013, with the largest Public & Private Contract for Pre competitive Technology Development in Spanish history.

 
PCR products

PCR products


The PCR technique (for Polymerase Chain Reaction) is widely used in molecular biology. The principle of PCR is to use an enzyme, a polymerase, to duplicate in large numbers a known DNA or RNA sequence from a small quantity. This is done by repeating temperature transition cycles. As a general rule, each cycle consists of 3 steps: denaturation, hybridization and elongation.
The denaturation phase consists in separating the 2 DNA strands in order to prepare the next step. The hybridization step allows the sense and antisense primers to hybridize to the DNA matrices (the 2 strands separated during denaturation). The time and temperature of this step varies according to the sequence of the primers. The elongation phase allows the polymerases to synthesize the complementary strand of the DNA matrix. This new strand is synthesized from the free dNTPs present in the reaction medium. The duration of this step depends on the length of the sequence to be amplified.
There are now different types of PCR such as classical PCR, RT-PCR which allows to use RNA as a starting point using a reverse transcriptase, quantitative real-time PCR or qPCR which allows to measure the amount of polymerized DNA at each cycle (in real time) using a fluorescent marker.