Patent ID: 7390621

Claim:
A method for detecting and quantifying telomerase activity in a biological sample, the method comprising the steps of: adding the biological sample to a reaction tube comprising: a first reaction mixture comprising a first primer, and nucleoside triphosphates; a second reaction mixture comprising a second primer and a DNA polymerase; and a wax layer separating the first reaction mixture from the second reaction mixture in the reaction tube; incubating the biological sample with the first reaction mixture under conditions suitable for a telomerase to produce an extension product from the first primer, said extension product having a telomeric repeat sequence at a 3′ end; elongating the extension product at the 3′ end by template-independent polyadenylation or template-independent ligation; admixing the extension product with the second reaction mixture by melting the wax layer; amplifying the elongated extension product using a real-time polymerase chain reaction under conditions that allow the detection of telomerase activity from a single 293T cell; and quantifying the amplified extension product using a control template.