Home Webinars On Demand Digital PCR Playbook: Applications and Challenges Across Research and Clinical Labs
Cancer cells
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Digital PCR Playbook: Applications and Challenges Across Research and Clinical Labs

Credit: anusorn nakdee / iStock / Getty Images Plus

Image of Alex Zevin, PhD

Alex Zevin, PhD

Director, Genomics Shared Resource
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Panelist

Image of Alex Zevin, PhD

Alex Zevin, PhD

Alex Zevin, PhD, began serving as the director of the Genomics Shared Resource at Fred Hutch in December 2022. Before that, he was a research scientist at ArcherDX where he developed NGS in vitro diagnostic devices including several clinical trial assays and an approved companion diagnostic. He also previously worked at InBios International and developed a rapid test for detection of anthrax.

Zevin has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Colorado State University and a PhD in molecular biology from Arizona State University where he developed methods to characterize bacterial communities in engineered systems and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Washington studying host-microbe interactions in non-human primate models.

Image of Rachel Kane

Rachel Kane

Director of Business Development
Countable Labs

Panelist

Image of Rachel Kane

Rachel Kane

Rachel Kane is Director of Business Development at Countable Labs, where she drives strategic growth across the life sciences and molecular diagnostics markets. With over a decade of commercial experience spanning genomics, proteomics, and molecular diagnostics, she has held business development and strategic account management roles at Olink Proteomics, Integrated DNA Technologies, ArcherDx, and Illumina, supporting research, clinical, and biopharma customers along the way.

Across these roles, Rachel has been a consistent advocate for the customer — focused on deeply understanding lab challenges and bringing innovative technologies to solve real problems at the bench and in the clinic. That customer-first philosophy shapes how she approaches her work at Countable Labs, where she is passionate about helping research and clinical labs unlock the potential of single-molecule counting PCR.

Rachel holds an M.S. in Biology with a focus in Microbiology from Northern Illinois University.

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Digital PCR has emerged as a powerful approach for precise nucleic acid quantification, but it is constrained by limited dynamic range and the difficulty of multiplexing. Newer platforms, like Countable Labs’ single-molecule counting PCR, address both by offering precise quantification across a broad range of target abundances while simplifying multiplexing through single-molecule isolation and fluorescent imaging across millions of spatially fixed compartments.

In this GEN webinar, Alex Zevin, PhD, director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center’s Genomics Shared Resource, draws on hands-on experience with managing a suite of nucleic acid quantification technologies, including standard qPCR, digital droplet PCR, and Countable PCR, to share practical guidance for labs considering or expanding their PCR quantification capabilities. Key insights from the webinar include:

  • How single-molecule counting differs from conventional digital PCR—and the sensitivity, precision, and multiplexing advantages it enables
  • Real-world applications suited to single-molecule counting PCR, including validating NGS results, replacing or supplementing existing assays, and generating clinically actionable data
  • Common challenges for converting qPCR and dPCR assays to single-molecule counting PCR, and how to overcome them

A live Q&A session followed the presentation offering a chance to pose questions to our expert panelist.

Produced with support from:

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