We have already talked how to detect single molecules. If you can detect single nucleic acid molecules you can detect single virus particles, and that would be very important to do that. We just have developed recently such a method, by a combination of the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy with the PCR technology, or we use the other amplification technology. What is the advantage of it? Well, first of all by using in the fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, using primers, which are only for the purpose of detecting the virus and therefore be very specific to the virus, you have no wrong, false, positives or negatives, you really. If there is a virus in there it will be detected by this. This is one very big advantage. The second advantage is that with this sensitive fluorescence technology, single molecule technology, you need only few replication rounds. So you can start ... The more replication rounds you need the less precise is the technology because the enzyme somehow degrades and finally you don't get the amplification which you want, and for any quantitative method this would be very important, to know how many molecules that you amplify. Because, the most important use of these diagnostic techniques nowadays is not to detect for the first time the sickness, it's more when you get a treatment to detect the level of the virus, to find out whether the treatment helps and keeps the virus population down, the level down. And for that you need quantitative methods, you need to get to say: alright, last week there were 'so-and-so' many viruses per litre of blood, this week there are 'so-and-so' many, and this is very important to do though. And the third advantage of this technology is all the present methods require quite a bit of ...
Material?
Not only material but also preparing the material, you have to make gels in order to find out whether your protein is in there or your nucleic acid which you look for. With the fluorescence you can really put your sample, your blood sample, with a mix, reaction mix, with your ...
Cocktail?
Cocktail, yes, together into a plastic foil and seal it vacuum proof.
So it's also safety arguments.
Yes. And then you never have to open it again. You put it under your microscope, you run your amplification circles. All that goes automatically and you see under the microscope, like in a titration procedure, how your substance comes up. So it's much safer for mass tests, it's a much safer way to do so. This is technology we are trying to develop, and we have patents on that and we are co-operating also with industry on various projects.