CRISPR-based diagnostics

This Review summarizes the rapidly expanding toolbox of assays for CRISPR-based diagnostics and highlights their point-of-care applications. The accurate and timely diagnosis of disease is a prerequisite for efficient therapeutic intervention and epidemiological surveillance. Diagnostics based on the detection of nucleic acids are among the most sensitive and specific, yet most such assays require costly equipment and trained personnel. Recent developments in diagnostic technologies, in particular those leveraging clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), aim to enable accurate testing at home, at the point of care and in the field. In this Review, we provide a rundown of the rapidly expanding toolbox for CRISPR-based diagnostics, in particular the various assays, preamplification strategies and readouts, and highlight their main applications in the sensing of a wide range of molecular targets relevant to human health.

Automated summary

This Review summarizes the rapidly expanding toolbox of CRISPR-based diagnostics, highlighting their applications in real-time diagnosis. It mentions that nucleic acid-based diagnostics are sensitive and specific, but most require expensive equipment and trained personnel.