Nature was right in choosing CRISPR diagnostic as one of the seven technologies to watch in 2022. The latest news is a test called mCARMEN, described in Nature Medicine. Pardis Sabeti (Broad Institute/Harvard), Cameron Myhrvold (Princeton University) and colleagues adapted a massively multiplexed technology presented in 2020 to be “faster, more sensitive and more easily implemented in clinical and surveillance labs”.

According to Sabeti, the assay can do 21 viruses simultaneously for less than US$10 a sample. By using a set of guide RNAs mCARMEN is able to recognize SarsCoV2 variant lineages and help spot emerging strains. The goal is to give more information than standard PCR-based swabs but spending less money and time than viral sequencing. To learn more see also the Broad Institute press-release.