Who’s your daddy?

AlphaBioLabs provide DNA paternity, drug and alcohol testing services and are the only lab used by The Jeremy Kyle Show for paternity tests. This year they are due to receive a Queen’s Award for Enterprise. David Thomas, Managing Director, explains more.

Congratulations on the award, Why were you nominated? We were nominated for the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation, due to the step change we introduced to the industry just over 2 years ago. Even now, with only one exception, the standard turnaround time for DNA relationship analysis is 3-5 days.

A difficult thing to perfect then? It took our dedicated DNA team nearly 12 months to develop and perfect the techniques required to a standard acceptable to the United Kingdom Accreditation Service.

You have been the laboratory of choice for the Jeremy Kyle show, providing next day results. How long has this partnership been in place? We are proud to have been the only DNA laboratory in the UK to have supported the Jeremy Kyle team from inception in 2005.

Are they your biggest client? No, our biggest clients are local authorities throughout the UK.

What do you think of the relationship between tabloid talk shows and science? Would you describe it as a ‘natural’ relationship? I believe that science has helped tabloid talk shows by enabling a new dimension of content that would be been out of reach 15 years ago. I do believe it has a symbiotic relationship in which the science enables the content of the show and the media raises awareness of the science.

How have advances in technology improved your ability to carry out DNA extraction? Advances in technology have enabled our team to change their thinking and think ‘outside of the box’. By doing this, we have linked different techniques together that would have otherwise been thought of as not possible.

You use 24 markers for paternity testing. Why is this important? We believe that the more markers that are used during the testing process, the more powerful the test becomes, and this is very useful when the mother has not participated in the test. It also minimises the risk of an inconclusive result that can be common in other types of relationship testing such as sibling and uncleship testing.

Which of your DNA services are the most used? Over 90% of our testing is used to verify paternity.

So why are we becoming slightly obsessed by this kind of testing? We think this is due to a multitude of reasons including availability of sample donors, (for example, if the putative father’s sample is not available, a sibling test may be appropriate), the media raising awareness of the existence of this type of test and the reduction in cost has made paternity testing more accessible to the masses. We are also seeing a sharp increase in paternity, maternity and sibling testing for immigration DNA cases. We believe this may be due to political and global migration reasons.

And, future plans? Our DNA team is working on a same day test as standard, which we hope we can roll out in early 2017. Our toxicology team has just developed and launched a same day urine screen and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry drug confirmation service. It is currently helping companies reduce cost and business interruption – in addition to reducing stress and anxiety of the U.K. workforce who may find themselves suspended from work pending the outcome of the laboratory confirmatory test. Currently the turnaround time with other laboratories is up to 5 working days. We aim to change that.