Outlook for CRISPR-based tuberculosis assays now in their infancy

Zhen Huang; Guoliang Zhang; Christopher J Lyon; Tony Y Hu; Shuihua Lu

doi:10.3389/fimmu.2023.1172035

Outlook for CRISPR-based tuberculosis assays now in their infancy

Front Immunol. 2023 Aug 3:14:1172035. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1172035. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Zhen Huang¹, Guoliang Zhang¹, Christopher J Lyon^{2

3}, Tony Y Hu^{2

3}, Shuihua Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Disease, Shenzhen Third People's Hospital, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China.
² Center for Cellular and Molecular Diagnostics, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, United States.
³ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Tulane University School of Medicine, New Orleans, LA, United States.

Abstract

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major underdiagnosed public health threat worldwide, being responsible for more than 10 million cases and one million deaths annually. TB diagnosis has become more rapid with the development and adoption of molecular tests, but remains challenging with traditional TB diagnosis, but there has not been a critical review of this area. Here, we systematically review these approaches to assess their diagnostic potential and issues with the development and clinical evaluation of proposed CRISPR-based TB assays. Based on these observations, we propose constructive suggestions to improve sample pretreatment, method development, clinical validation, and accessibility of these assays to streamline future assay development and validation studies.

Keywords: CRISPR; challenge and outlook; diagnosis; point-of-care; tuberculosis.

Publication types

Systematic Review
Review
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Biological Assay*
Humans
Public Health
Tuberculosis* / diagnosis
Tuberculosis* / genetics

Grants and funding

The work was primarily supported by the Shenzhen Fund for Guangdong Provincial High-level Clinical Key Specialties (No. SZGSP010), the Special Fund for Science and Technology Innovation of Guangdong (No. 2020B1111170014), the Medical Scientific Research Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. A2023170), and Shenzhen Clinicla Research Center for Tuberculosis (202106171415099001).