And in the meantime....

The whole world has changed! Firstly we hope that you and your families are safe and well during this time. Please stay safe!

At this stage we don’t appear to be too affected by the restrictions that are being put in place. Our service providers are still up and running and doing business as usual. Therefore, Batch 11 is still on track for extraction and QC in April. Clients with other samples will be communicated with on a case by case basis over the next two weeks.

We mentioned too that totheletter DNA is processing samples from clients whose deceased loved-one spent time in hospital. In some of these cases, the hospital may have taken a tissue or other sample from the person. Many of these samples would be what is called an FFPE sample (tissue based in paraffin). Each hospital may have its own guidelines around storage and disposal, but we expect samples would be retained for an average of 10 years. Obviously, right now is not a good time to be pursuing this with hospitals that have other priorities. But we mention this to keep in mind, as an FFPE-based sample offers a good chance of successful DNA extraction and genotyping.