"MRC" is short for Microbiology Research Centre.

History

MRC Holland is a follow-up of Microbiology Research Centre Holland, founded in 1985 by Dr. Jan Schouten. Originally the main products produced by MRC Holland were restriction endonucleases – purified from a wide range of bacteria and blue green algae – and DNA molecular weight markers. These products were sold in bulk amounts to distributing companies worldwide until 2000. In 1997, the focus of the company shifted to the development of new techniques for DNA analysis.

In 2002, the first paper on Multiplex Ligation-dependent Probe Amplification, or MLPA^®, was published. Since then, MLPA has become the gold standard in copy number variation detection, with over 400 probemixes on the market.

MRC Holland continues to innovate with the development of new MLPA assays, the improvement of existing assays, and the recent introduction of two new technologies. In 2018, we launched our first Melt Assay for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) newborn screening. In 2020, we launched the digitalMLPA technique, which combines the trusted quality of MLPA with the power of next-generation sequencing to examine many more target sequences in a single reaction.