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Diagnostics

Point-of-care tuberculosis testing

Nature Reviews Bioengineering volume 3, page 444 (2025)Cite this article

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Tuberculosis affects over 10 million individuals worldwide, with more than 90% of new cases occurring in low- and middle-income countries. It is typically diagnosed either by analysing patient sputum using culture techniques, which can take weeks, or by a rapid PCR-based test, which is cost-prohibitive.

Point-of-care diagnostics pose specific challenges; an effective test needs to be rapid enough to enable testing, diagnosis and treatment within a single visit and it must be stable in ambient conditions if cold storage is not available. Thus, the team designed a single reaction assay to process DNA isolated from patient samples. “Our assay includes recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) to amplify a pathogen-derived DNA sequence, and a CRISPR–Cas12a guide RNA (gRNA) complex that recognizes and cleaves the tuberculosis DNA sequence along with a single-stranded DNA reporter that produces a fluorescent signal for pathogen detection”, says Hu. Typically, single-reaction RPA or CRISPR assays have poor sensitivity. However, the researchers optimized the reaction by using specific gRNA to improve Cas12a binding and amplification of the pathogenic DNA sequence. After the reaction was finalized, the assay reagents were lyophilized to preserve and stabilize them.

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References

Original article

  • Youngquist, B. M. et al. Rapid tuberculosis diagnosis from respiratory or blood samples by a low cost, portable lab-in-tube assay. Sci. Transl. Med. 17, eadp6411 (2025)

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Related article

  • Abou Jaoude, G. J. et al. National tuberculosis spending efficiency and its associated factors in 121 low-income and middle-income countries, 2010–19: a data envelopment and stochastic frontier analysis. Lancet Global Health 10, e649–e660 (2022)

    Article  Google Scholar 

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  1. Nature Reviews Bioengineering https://www.nature.com/natrevbioeng/

    Caroline Beyer

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  1. Caroline Beyer
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Correspondence to Caroline Beyer.

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Beyer, C. Point-of-care tuberculosis testing. Nat Rev Bioeng 3, 444 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-025-00327-0

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