UST Ebi Team bags 2nd place in nat’l. invention contest for White Spot Syndrome Virus detection kit in shrimp

The UST Ebi Team headed by Assoc. Prof. Mary Beth B. Maningas, PhD bagged second place in the recently-concluded National Invention Contest and Exhibit (NICE) 2016. The event was spearheaded by the Department of Science and Technology – Technology Application and Promotion Institute (DOST – TAPI) and was held last July 28-31, 2016 at the SMX Convention Center, Pasay City. Joining Dr. Maningas were Mr. Pocholo Arabit of the Senior High School and Ms. Sharlaine Joi Orense.

NICE is a competition open to both public and private sector inventors and researchers who are winners of the 2015 Regional Invention Contest and Exhibits (RICE 2015); it aims to hone the creativity, craftsmanship, and inventive capabilities of the Filipinos. The contest has six categories, namely: Invention Category (Tuklas Award), Utility Model Category, Industrial Design Category, Creative Research Category (Likha Award), and Student Creative Research Category (Sibol Award) for High School and College.

There were ten contenders in the Creative Research Category (LIKHA Award), all of which are new ideas and inventions that are not only designed to benefit the Filipino people but are also viable in the market.

For this year, the UST Ebi Team presented the Juan Amplification (JAmp) Detection Kit, a Rapid DNA amplification for WSSV detection in shrimp. The JAmp-WSSV Detection kit is based on loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), a diagnostics assay that detects the White Spot Syndrome Virus (WSSV) using sequence-specific amplification at one temperature condition. This diagnostic kit is simple, cost-effective, suitable for on-site applications and able to yield results within an hour; giving it an advantage over the other detection methods available in the market. A patent application of the kit was filed by the UST Innovation and Technology Support Office (ITSO) last May 31, 2013 and awaiting its possible grant.

The project was funded by DOST-PCAARRD and is currently housed at the Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Laboratory, Thomas Aquinas Research Complex, University of Santo Tomas.

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