Last update:
06-Jul-2004

Amongst a multitude of emerging molecular methods, multiplex PCR and the microarrays are two methods of extreme importance. Both are evolutionary –rather than revolutionary– spinoffs of existing, well-established techniques which increase by several orders of magnitude the effectiveness of their predecessors. Their expansion stimulated development of supplementary procedures to ensure dependable sample processing, analysis of data and interpretation of the results. The arrays, in particular, have initiated immense progress in numerous fields seemingly unrelated to the Biosciences, ultimately creating new areas within the disciplines of the Biosciences through featuring high throughput processing in parallel. Thus, the sciences of Genomics, Pharmacogenomics, Proteomics, Metabolomics, Toxicogenomics, Pharmacogenomics and Bioinformatics have emerged. The combination of the two techniques offers revolutionary prospects, despite creating the necessity for design, infrastructure, know-how and dependable methodologies for result confirmation and the engineering of related hardware components. Coupling these systems with modern procedures for signal production, detection, evaluation and analysis can lead to extraordinary levels of micro-sample analysis. Such specifications are by definition invaluable to medical diagnostics, but the eventual users so far remain sceptical, preferring more conventional approaches. Moreover, approaches in medical diagnostics are still tentative and clearly a byproduct of other related fields, such as Genetics, which embraced the new technology earlier. Thus, diagnostic arrays are usually adapted versions of those already existing in other research fields. Optimization of the combined multiplex PCR/microarray techniques for diagnostic purposes will provide the acute discriminatory power needed for diagnosis of an increasing number of pathogens and may offer the sole solution to increasingly intricate diagnostic challenges.

Key words: Arrays, Diagnostics, Multiplex PCR.