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Molecular diagnostics as a whole is revolutionizing healthcare and changing the way people are treated. It represents almost a tenth of the in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) market, yet most of it promises revenue growth. Once esoteric, molecular diagnostics has earned its place in routine medical practice and has expanded to all levels of healthcare - from the pathology lab to the doctor's office and clinics. Still, as they occupy routine spaces, their growth trajectory is secured through platform innovation in lower-cost nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs) and clinical next-generation sequencing (NGS).
Technology Trends
Over the past 20 years, clinical molecular diagnostic technology has made rapid development, and became the most promising field in clinical laboratory medicine. New technologies and applications are being continually added, making it a rapidly advancing area of research and medicine.
PCR. It is continuously evolving. Modern target amplification platforms, for example, provide greater sensitivity from a smaller sample size; they do so by using Frster resonance energy transfer (FRET) to deliver a larger number of PCR cycles on almost any open qPCR platform with virtually no background.
Digital PCR (dPCR) is an increasingly popular manifestation of PCR that offers a number of distinctive advantages when applied to preclinical research. As is common with many new research methods, the application of dPCR to potential clinical scenarios is also being increasingly described. dPCR could have an important role in advancing molecular diagnostics either by supporting qPCR calibration or as a diagnostic method in its own right.
NGS. It is one of the greatest achievements of the modern era and has revolutionized molecular diagnostic testing. Not since the advent of the PCR has there been such a dramatic transformation in the capabilities of molecular analysis of DNA and RNA for clinical diagnostic testing. As the cost, speed, and ease of use of NGS continue to improve, this technology has the potential to replace many of the current molecular testing modalities. Although it is unlikely to replace many of the common molecular technologies...