Reinventing PCR: Pranav Patel, N6 Tec

Reinventing PCR, huh? That’s what we asked Pranav Patel, CEO and co-founder of N6 Tec, on today’s show. After all, PCR is one of the oldest tools in the molecular biology toolbox. Isn’t that field… done?

Turns out, not at all.

Patel — a veteran of PacBio, 10x Genomics, and founder of 2D Genomics — is back with a bold rethink of thermocycling itself. His new platform, IconPCR, isn’t just another black box with 96 wells. It’s the first of its kind to feature independently controlled wells, enabling real-time amplification, quantification, and normalization — all in a single run. If PCR was once just about making more DNA, IconPCR is about making just the right amount, at just the right time — and eliminating the variability that can quietly wreck your sequencing before it even starts.

“Instead of me telling it how many cycles, I can tell it how much DNA I want — and it will determine the cycles by itself. That’s the fundamental shift,” he says.

But maybe the bigger shift is cultural — a refusal to treat sample prep as solved, and a willingness to build new tools for today’s applications, not yesterday’s.

“It gets branded as a PCR machine. But honestly, the capability of it is so much more. It does what would otherwise take multiple instruments — and it does it from day one.”

With a blend of unaffected humor and technical rigor, Pranav walks us through the frustration that led to this innovation, the simplicity of the idea, and the engineering feat that makes it possible.

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