One big threat to molecular diagnostics is the up-and-coming CRISPR-based diagnostics technology.
While this new tech is not perfect yet but, in my view, it will displace qPCR in a few years.
You can read more about it in this Nature paper here: CRISPR-based diagnostics | Nature Biomedical Engineering
I have posted some content from the paper below –
Abstract
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.
Main
The fast and accurate diagnosis of a disease is central to effective treatment and to the prevention of long-term sequelae1. Nucleic-acid-based biomarkers associated with disease are essential for diagnostics because DNA and RNA can be amplified from trace amounts, which enables their highly specific detection via the pairing of complementary nucleotides. In fact, nucleic-acid-based diagnostics have become the gold standard for various acute and chronic conditions, especially those caused by infectious diseases2. During infectious-disease outbreaks, as most recently experienced with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, fast and precise nucleic-acid-based testing is vital for effective disease control3,4. The detection of nucleic acid biomarkers is also critical for agriculture and food safety, for environmental monitoring and in the sensing of biological warfare agents.
Nucleic acid-based diagnostics relying on the quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) or on sequencing have been widely adopted, and are frequently used in clinical laboratories. The versatility, robustness and sensitivity of PCR have made this technology the most commonly used for the detection of DNA and RNA biomarkers. In fact, PCR is the gold-standard technique for most nucleic-acid-based diagnostics. However, the costs of reagents for PCR are high, and the technique requires sophisticated laboratory equipment and trained personnel. Although isothermal nucleic acid amplification circumvents the need for thermal cyclers, non-specific amplification can result in lower detection specificity6. The specificity can be improved through additional readouts, in particular by fluorescent probes, oligo strand-displacement probes or molecular beacons. However, there is a need for technologies that combine the ease of use and cost efficiency of isothermal amplification with the diagnostic accuracy of PCR. Ideally, such next-generation diagnostics should also have single-nucleotide specificity, which is integral to the detection of mutations conferring resistance against antibiotics or antiviral drugs.
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