Abstract

Improvements in Molecular Diagnosis of Pathogens and Diseases

Panagiotis Karanis, Professor, University Of Cologne

Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) belongs to a range of main current and new diagnostic techniques for early-stage detection of pathogens such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, worms, amongst other. In addition, molecular recognition of cancer, genetic disorders and species determination or sex determination of organisms has also achieved by LAMP. The LAMP reaction was found to be superior over the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in most cases with respect to detection limit, sensitivity, specificity and usefulness. The superior capability of LAMP relies on the application of primer sets consisting of four to six designated primers that recognize certain regions of the target nucleic acid sequence and on the incorporation of Bst DNA polymerase capable of splicing DNA strands. We can expect that research on and application of the LAMP method will take a course that is similar to that of the PCR method during the last decades, which means improvement of its already high sensitivity and specificity, improvement of its multiplexing capability, extension of its application fields to both highly specialized detection tasks and fields of economic interest and further cost reduction. This presentation will offer a valuable guide to the development of LAMP in molecular detection and determination of target sequences and will present examples with bright field applications of the method from the detection of pathogens to clinical applications for the diagnosis of cancer and other disorders according to current stage of this well-accepted methodology by the scientific community during the last decade.