Mawi DNA Technologies: A Story of a Father and his Daughter

The story of Mawi DNA Technologies begins with a blood sample. The company itself was launched in late 2013 but the idea was born many years earlier, when Dr. Bassam El Fahmawi's first child was born. Soon after birth his daughter unfortunately contracted meningitis, requiring many blood samples to be drawn for diagnosis and treatment. Eventually her tiny veins were in danger of collapsing from repeated attempts to obtain blood. Fearing for her life, it was at this moment that Dr. Bassam vowed to invent the non-invasive sample collection technology now know as iSWAB, to spare other parents and their children of the emotional and physical trauma he and his daughter had just endured.

Based upon his academic training in Microbiology and previous experience owning and running a lab, Dr. Bassam already knew existing non-invasive sample collection methods such as swabs and saliva had several drawbacks. Swabs gave poor quality DNA and were a challenge to automate, and saliva was difficult to provide by all population segments and family members. In addition neither method did anything to control the bacterial DNA content inherently present in all oral samples which often skews results and can be difficult to account for especially with more sophisticated applications such as Whole Genome Seqencing (WGS).

As his career progressed, Dr. Bassam carefully and intentionally built his toolbox of skills and knowledge in order to make iSWAB a reality. After almost 10 years in conception and development, iSWAB-DNA was finally commercialized in 2014. Fast forward to 2024, and the features Dr. Bassam built into this product are more relevant than ever.

• iSWAB-DNA is the ONLY human/mammalian DNA sample collection product on the market that actively prevents bacterial DNA from contaminating the sample.
• The mechanism of action of the proprietary stabilizing buffer used in iSWAB-DNA allows for the release of high-quality, long fragment, double stranded DNA, averaging around 40 kb.
• Collected samples are stable for several years at room temperature enabling sample collection from anywhere in the world, both developed and rural

iSWAB Samples Have Gained Acceptance as a Suitable Replacement for Blood in Many Applications

The low bacterial DNA content in iSWAB samples means blood is no longer the only acceptable sample type for efficient Whole Genome Sequencing. iSWAB-DNA is rapidly gaining acceptance and recognition as the only NON-INVASIVE sample collection method suitable for this application. Currently, our customers are able to achieve a 96%+ success rate in WGS, which dramatically streamlines operations and reduces costs.

The high-quality human genomic DNA stabilized in iSWAB has become the gold standard for epigenetic studies, due to the preservation of intact methyl groups.

Customers doing microarray and PCR based genotyping report less than 5% lifetime sample failure rate, along with reduced Quantity Not Sufficient results.