Can CRISPR-Based Covid-19 Testing Using Smartphones Slow The Pandemic?

Forbes December 13, 2020
Robert Glatter, MD

We continue to struggle with the ongoing pandemic in the U.S. due to political and cultural influences on mitigation measures (wearing masks, distancing), the lack of a comprehensive national testing strategy, but also due to the difficulty in reliably identifying symptomatic, asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19.

While we typically wait for many days to get results from PCR-based nasal swabs, a test which has been inappropriately used to screen the U.S. population for SARS-CoV-2, two recent proof-of-concept studies using novel smartphone-based CRISPR technology coupled with optics and fluorescence detection may be poised to change how we approach not only rapid testing and screening, but also testing for acute infection. Interestingly, the motivation for research...

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