Look out Qiagen - Silica column recycling is here

Basically the commercial DNA isolation kits we all depend on are all about the silica spin column. They're what make the kits fast and reliable, justifying their high cost in comparison to alternative old-school methods. This article describes a new product called maxXbond, basically a two-buffer system that's supposed to remove residual DNA and other crap from the columns after use. The columns can then be re-used for prepping new samples (at least 20 times over they claim). Sounds like the days of miniprep kit mass consumption are over. If I had shares in Qiagen I'd be selling them about now (if this stuff actually works)...

Supposedly they have patents pending, but I haven't yet been able to find them in either the US or European databases. I also couldn't find anything on what's acutally in the solutions.