UCR-Courtesy
Costa Rica will be the only country in Central America and The Caribbean with a new DNA sequencing.
It is a new, medical equipment that has the ability to process and analyze the DNA in a faster and more efficient way than the traditional method. It is done in order to find the variants in the human genome that affect the occurrence of complex diseases such as cancer or sudden death.
The sequencer, which cost about 120 thousand dollars (¢ 65 million), will be located at the University of Costa Rica (UCR) but the studies will be carried out with the Costa Rican Social Security Fund (CCSS).
Initially, the study of breast cancer and heart disease, associated with sudden death, will be a priority.
With this new contribution, the country takes its first step to migrate from the traditional method, created in 1975, to a technique with significant improvements in quality, cost, speed, accuracy and research depth.