From Lab to Life: The Rise of CRISPR-Based Diagnostics for Point-of-Care and Global Health

The urgent need for decentralized, rapid, and affordable point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tools has been starkly highlighted by recent global health crises, underscoring their critical role in achieving health equity. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-Cas systems, repurposed from their revolutionary gene-editing origins, have emerged as a transformative platform technology for molecular diagnostics, offering unparalleled programmability, specificity, and sensitivity for nucleic acid detection. The core of these diagnostics lies in the unique catalytic mechanisms of specific Cas effectors, notably the target-activated, non-specific trans-cleavage activity of Cas12 and Cas13 proteins. This collateral cleavage of reporter molecules provides a powerful intrinsic mechanism for signal amplification, enabling sensitive detection. This review critically examines the rapid evolution of CRISPR-based diagnostics, from their fundamental molecular principles to their real-world applications. Key applications in infectious disease surveillance and management are summarized, including the rapid development of assays for SARS-CoV-2, HIV, and tuberculosis, with a particular focus on adaptations for field-deployable formats such as lateral flow assays. As the technology continues to mature, overcoming remaining hurdles in sample preparation, multiplexing, and reagent stability will be paramount. Ultimately, CRISPR-based diagnostics are poised to become an indispensable and democratizing component of the global health toolkit, empowering frontline healthcare workers and transforming disease control on a global scale.