Scientists at the University of Florida in the United States have developed a new non-invasive blood testing method based on CRISPR technology. This method, called EXTRA CRISPR, has the same effectiveness in cancer diagnosis as the widely used reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT qPCR), and can be used in conjunction with a simple portable device, which is expected to greatly accelerate the process of early cancer diagnosis. The latest method works by detecting micro RNA molecules involved in gene expression within small particles (extracellular vesicles) circulating in the blood. Micro RNA molecules are currently receiving attention and have become a source of development for cancer biomarkers in bodily fluids (such as blood). However, they are very complex and lack sensitive detection tools, so their clinical applications are still limited. Extracellular vesicles are nanoparticles actively released by cells, which play an important role in cellular function and diseases by transmitting biological molecules between cells. The powerful genome editing tool CRISPR has been used to develop new disease diagnosis bioassay methods, but at present this method requires manual processing of multi-step reactions, and its sensitivity is not as good as the gold standard RT qPCR. The researchers pointed out that they hope to simplify the entire workflow to a "one tube method": every chemical reagent required, except for the sample, is stored in a test tube, and can be used for diagnosis by simply adding microRNA molecule samples to trigger reactions. For this reason, they designed EXTRA CRISPR, which not only makes the operation simpler, but also has a low risk of cross contamination. The results indicate that in cancer diagnosis, the sensitivity of EXTRA CRISPR is comparable to PCR detection, and it has excellent analytical and diagnostic performance, while greatly accelerating the workflow. (Outlook New Era Network)