Could CRISPR Diagnostics Provide a Valuable Weapon in the Fight against Pandemic Flu?

Conclusion: What Could This Mean for CRISPR Diagnostics? While any point-of-care tests—whether existing nucleic acid assays or CRISPR diagnostics as discussed in this article—aren’t going to assist in identifying the completely unknown, they will provide some of the solution once the pathogen has been identified. Then with the need for specific tests to be rushed out all over the world, the potential speed of CRISPR assay development, particularly if pre-amplification were not required, might come into its own. These tests would be distributed quickly around the world by air. Unfortunately, this might also be true of respiratory viruses such as Influenza—the very logistics that technology research has helped improve so remarkably in the last 100 years mean that we will encourage a very rapid global spread of the next flu pandemic, 100 years after the Spanish Flu pandemic. Until alternative vaccination methods exist, the information provided by point-of-care diagnostics could play the most significant role in monitoring and containing the next pandemic. Strain-specific tests administered easily and quickly would be a substantial step forward, and it is exciting to consider how CRISPR-based diagnostics could enable this. References 1. “Influenza Positive Tests Reported to CDC by Public Health Laboratories, National Summary, 2017-18 Season, week ending Sep 29, 2018” FluVie...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: IVD Source Type: news