CRISPR-CAS VS COVID-19

Abstract

An outbreak of a respiratory illness caused by a Novel Corona Virus called SARS-COV2 was first reported in Wuhan, a province of China in last quarter of 2019. So far there is no specific, proven, or standard treatment known. Neither is there a vaccine which assures a 100% efficacy. Subsequently the outbreak in China spread to the rest of the world affecting nearly all the countries, some worse than some others. The only relatively reliable diagnostic test is the RT- PCR test with a few short comings like the possibility of a false positive or a false negative report. There may not be enough testing kits and the results take a few hours to several days to be obtained depending on the number of samples to be processed, since this test cannot be done in just any laboratory. It needs specific equipment and other instrumentational requirements. In the peak of a pandemic where the laboratories are backed up with sample, it would be ideal to have a home test kit or a self-test kit, much like taking a pregnancy test to get quick and accurate results. The availability of reliable point-of-care testing (POCT) method would help the doctors and patients alike. One such method is the CRISPR – Cas based method which diagnosis the SARS-COV-2 infection within hours. CRISPR is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats which detects nucleic acid in a simple, fast, and highly sensitive manner. This is an RNA based testing method in which the crRNA (CRISPR RNA) can specifically detect the target protein. This concept can be extended to detection of many other viral infections, pathogenic infections, and fungal infections. This method can be made more efficient, accurate and affordable to achieve point-of-care diagnostics. PAC-MAN, a prophylactic antiviral CRISPR in human cells is a cas 13 based strategy and is being developed against SARS_COV2 but is a long way from Human trials. The article focuses on the potential application of CRISPR- Cas methodology in developing a safe and sensitive diagnostic mechanism for COVID -19 which can help in early detection and treatment of the infected people.