ABSTRACT
According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America and Food and Drug Administration, syndrome-based diagnosis is a dramatic new way of in vitro diagnosis (IVD) since Pasteur. After the microbiology based on Pasteur's method and PCR, the company Dendris proposed a third-generation of diagnosis enabling the search of broad range of pathogens, with high sensitivity and specificity. Functionalization of glass slides with phosphorus dendrimers with aldehyde functions at their periphery allows production of more sensitive and reliable DNA microarrays. Successful use and reliability of microarray technology is highly dependent on several factors, including surface chemistry parameters and accessibility of cDNA targets to the DNA probes fixed onto the surface. The DendrisChip provides an accurate diagnostic and also allows questioning about identification assessed by microbial methods. In numerous cases, the DendrisChip confirmed the presence of a pathogen suspected but not confirmed by culture in several examples and revealed more information thanks to its ability to detect co-infections.
