Molecular public health represents an emerging paradigm that integrates molecular epidemiology with public health practice to enhance infectious disease prevention and surveillance. This comprehensive review examines the conceptual framework and technological infrastructure underpinning this integrated approach. Key components include bioinformatics and data integration systems that serve as interpretive engines for molecular datasets, alongside molecular detection and quantification technologies that enable precise pathogen identification. The review emphasizes next-generation sequencing for pathogen genomic surveillance, genomic epidemiology and phylodynamics for tracking disease transmission, and metagenomics for pathogen-agnostic surveillance capabilities. Novel applications include wastewater and environmental surveillance for early disease detection, One Health molecular surveillance coordinating human-animal-environmental monitoring, and molecular approaches to antimicrobial resistance tracking. Advanced techniques such as multi-omics analysis and host-response surveillance provide deeper biological insights, while artificial intelligence and computational public health optimize data interpretation and predictive modeling. Together, these technologies create a sophisticated surveillance ecosystem that enables real-time pathogen monitoring, rapid outbreak detection, and evidence-based public health interventions for emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases.

Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time-Of-Flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry has emerged as a transformative technology for rapid microbial identification across clinical, environmental, and industrial applications. Recent research demonstrates the integration of MALDI-TOF with artificial intelligence significantly enhances bacterial and viral pathogen classification accuracy and speed, addressing critical needs in clinical diagnostics and biodefense. Notable developments include IDBac, an open-access web platform enabling bacteria identification and relationship analysis using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, published in Nature Communications. Comparative studies reveal performance differences between systems, including the Bruker Microflex LT Biotyper and the newer Zybio EXS2600 Ex-Accuspec, tested on 1,130 milk bacterial isolates. The technology demonstrates particular value in detecting antibiotic resistance in Burkholderia pseudomallei and identifying microbial contamination in diesel fuels. These advances matter significantly because rapid, accurate pathogen identification enables faster clinical interventions, supports public health surveillance for antibiotic-resistant organisms, and protects fuel system integrity and operational safety across diverse sectors.

Horizon Europe Cluster 6 is launching funding opportunities for 2026-2027 addressing critical challenges in food security, biodiversity conservation, land management, and bioeconomy development. The call calendar opens between January and August 2026, with subsequent openings in February and April 2027, featuring deadlines spanning April through September 2026 and extending into May 2027. A microfluidic technology specialist has analyzed the cluster's work programme to identify calls with significant relevance to microfluidic applications. Key opportunities with highest microfluidic relevance include commercializing food systems microbiome solutions, integrating holistic microbiome research for sustainable food systems, assessing groundwater ecosystem functions, decontaminating and bioremediation of aquatic pollution, advancing European bio-based innovation through biotechnology and biomanufacturing, developing microbiome applications for livestock sustainability, and implementing advanced solutions for controlled environment agriculture. The analysis ranks microfluidic relevance from fifty to one hundred percent across eligible topics. This strategic assessment enables SMEs and research organizations to identify optimal funding opportunities aligned with microfluidic engineering capabilities and innovation potential within European agricultural and environmental priorities.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical diagnostic testing gaps, with laboratories overwhelmed by high sample volumes, delayed results, and compromised disease control. While existing point-of-care testing devices lack sensitivity and molecular tests like PCR demand complex infrastructure and trained personnel, contamination risks further limit decentralized testing. This patent introduces an innovative, fully integrated microfluidic device for nucleic acid molecular point-of-care testing that operates on a "sample-in, result-out" workflow without requiring laboratory settings or specialized training. The disposable device comprises three components: a sample tube with buffer, a microfluidic reaction tube pre-loaded with dried amplification reagents, and a readout cartridge. Its closed-system design prevents contamination through sealed connections, while capillary-driven fluidics and thermally activated valves control liquid transfer. A puncture mechanism releases amplified products onto a lateral flow assay strip for colorimetric detection. By eliminating manual steps like pipetting and centrifugation and employing isothermal amplification such as LAMP, the device enables rapid, equipment-free nucleic acid detection. This innovation addresses the urgent need for portable, user-friendly, contamination-proof molecular diagnostics accessible in non-laboratory environments.

Researchers have developed a CRISPR/Cas-based diagnostic approach for detecting Klebsiella pneumoniae, a clinically significant pathogen responsible for serious infections worldwide. The study, authored by Yi, Luo, and colleagues and published in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, addresses the dual threat posed by carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae (CRKP) and hypervirulent K. pneumoniae (hvKp) strains. The diagnostic platform targets both antimicrobial resistance-associated markers and hypervirulence-associated markers, enabling rapid and accurate identification of pathogenic variants. This advancement translates molecular detection capabilities into clinically interpretable risk reporting, facilitating more informed clinical decision-making and patient management strategies. By combining CRISPR/Cas technology with comprehensive marker analysis, the approach offers healthcare providers actionable intelligence about infection severity and treatment options, potentially improving outcomes in cases of K. pneumoniae infection while supporting antimicrobial stewardship efforts in clinical settings.

The FDA has cleared a multiplex PCR test capable of simultaneously detecting 13 different respiratory pathogens, addressing a significant clinical challenge in infectious disease diagnosis. Respiratory tract infections present a diagnostic dilemma because numerous causative agents produce overlapping, nonspecific symptoms that clinicians initially classify as influenza-like illnesses. This multiplex approach enables rapid, comprehensive pathogen identification from a single patient sample, improving diagnostic accuracy and potentially streamlining treatment decisions. By distinguishing between multiple viral and bacterial respiratory agents in one test, clinicians can better differentiate between conditions requiring different therapeutic interventions and infection control measures. The technology represents an advancement in molecular diagnostics, allowing healthcare providers to move beyond empirical treatment protocols toward targeted antimicrobial therapy based on confirmed pathogen identification. This development enhances clinical efficiency and supports appropriate antibiotic stewardship by reducing unnecessary prescriptions for patients with viral infections, while accelerating care for those requiring specific antimicrobial therapy.

Organ-on-a-Chip (OoC) systems represent a transformative approach to in vitro diagnostics, integrating microfluidic engineering, 3D tissue construction, and sensing technologies to recreate human organ functionality with unprecedented physiological relevance. This comprehensive review from Chongqing Three Gorges Medical College examines how OoC platforms address critical limitations of traditional 2D cell cultures and animal models, which contribute to the 90% failure rate of candidate drugs and biomarkers during clinical translation. The article systematically covers core construction technologies including microfluidic regulation, cell and tissue engineering, and material innovation, alongside dual-detection systems combining real-time online monitoring with offline analysis. Key applications span disease modeling, biomarker screening, drug toxicity evaluation, and personalized diagnosis. The review also explores Multi-Organ-Chip systems enhanced by Artificial Intelligence integration while identifying significant bottlenecks: insufficient physiological complexity, standardization gaps, and clinical translation barriers. By establishing theoretical frameworks and practical guidance for transitioning OoC from research laboratories to clinical tools, this work emphasizes the urgent need for technological optimization, standardization protocols, and regulatory pathway development to realize OoC's potential in improving drug development efficiency and diagnostic accuracy.

West Nile virus (WNV) represents the most common domestic arboviral infection in the contiguous United States, yet current surveillance methods remain fragmented and incomplete. Existing surveillance approaches—including mosquito monitoring, dead bird tracking, and human testing—are inconsistently applied nationwide and often miss mild or asymptomatic infections. Researchers assessed wastewater surveillance as a supplementary tool for comprehensive WNV tracking by testing archived RNA and raw wastewater samples from six states during the 2023 transmission season. The study detected WNV RNA in 18 percent of samples across Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, and Nebraska. These findings demonstrate wastewater surveillance's capability to identify WNV circulation in communities, including cases that traditional surveillance methods would overlook. Since no approved vaccines or therapeutics for WNV currently exist, and severe neuroinvasive disease affects less than one percent of infected individuals while approximately 1,300 neuroinvasive cases occur annually, enhanced surveillance systems are critical. Wastewater surveillance offers significant potential to augment existing WNV monitoring infrastructure and provide earlier detection of viral circulation patterns, enabling more timely public health interventions.

Infectious disease management is increasingly adopting precision approaches where antimicrobial therapy selection, timing, and dosing are guided by diagnostic findings about pathogen characteristics, host response, and drug action mechanisms. Diagnostic-guided antimicrobial stewardship has emerged as a critical strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by enabling clinicians to target treatment to the specific biology of an infection rather than relying on empirical approaches. However, realizing this potential requires bridging two often-disconnected levels of evidence: the microbiological and immunological basis of diagnostic tests—including which resistance mechanisms, virulence factors, and host-response signatures they detect and how reliably these map to treatment outcomes—and their clinical performance in real-world settings. Recent experiences from the COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing AMR containment efforts demonstrate that diagnostic capability frequently becomes the rate-limiting factor in infectious disease response. To address this gap, a comprehensive research initiative brings together microbiologists, immunologists, infectious disease clinicians, and diagnostics researchers to establish an evidence base linking pathogen and host biology to diagnostic-guided antimicrobial decision-making. Key research areas include identifying biomarkers for resistance detection, validating host-response signatures that distinguish infection types, and developing rapid point-of-care diagnostics suitable for resource-limited settings, ultimately transforming promising markers into practical stewardship tools.

Researchers have developed a novel CRISPR-Cas13-based diagnostic platform for rapid detection of three quarantine-significant sugarcane viruses without requiring nucleic acid amplification. This amplification-free approach represents a significant advancement over traditional PCR-based methods, offering faster results and simplified workflows. The technique leverages the specificity of Cas13 proteins to identify viral RNA sequences directly, providing a more efficient diagnostic solution. The study, published in Plant Cell Reports in September 2026, demonstrates the feasibility of this molecular detection strategy for plant virology applications. By eliminating amplification steps, the method reduces processing time and complexity while maintaining detection accuracy for viruses of quarantine importance in sugarcane cultivation. This advancement has implications for improving disease surveillance and quarantine protocols in agricultural settings, enabling faster identification of infected plants to prevent viral spread. The amplification-free CRISPR-Cas13 platform could serve as a foundation for developing portable, field-deployable diagnostic tools for plant disease management.

A 20-second voice recording can already reveal something about your risk of type 2 diabetes. London startup Thymia trained a model using speech from more than 21,000 people, validated it on another 7,319, and then compared its predictions with HbA1c blood tests in 801 participants. In that blood-tested group, the model gave a person with diabetes a higher risk score than someone without it about 75% of the time, and at one screening threshold it flagged 82% of diabetes cases. It is still a preprint and nowhere near replacing a blood test, but the remarkable part is that a metabolic disease leaves enough information inside 20 seconds of ordinary speech for an AI model to pick it up.

The cobas® eplex respiratory pathogen panel 2 (RP2 Panel) is a multiplexed nucleic acid in vitro diagnostic test designed for use on the cobas® eplex instrument to simultaneously detect and differentiate respiratory viral and bacterial pathogens from nasopharyngeal swabs. The panel identifies nucleic acids from twenty-two distinct organisms, including SARS-CoV-2, various coronavirus strains (229E, HKU1, NL63, OC43), influenza A and B with specific H1 and H3 subtypes, respiratory syncytial virus A and B, parainfluenza viruses 1-4, adenovirus, human metapneumovirus, rhinovirus/enterovirus, Chlamydia pneumoniae, and Mycoplasma pneumoniae. The test is intended for individuals suspected of respiratory viral infection consistent with COVID-19 and must be performed in CLIA-certified laboratories with moderate to high complexity test capabilities. Results aid in diagnosing respiratory infections when combined with clinical and epidemiological information, though positive findings indicate active infection and should not independently determine patient management decisions.

Horizon Europe is launching microbiome-focused funding opportunities across 2026 and 2027, with calls opening December 2025 through April 2027. A microfluidics SME has analyzed the most relevant topics from the work programmes, categorizing them by their potential impact on microbiome science across food, health, and environmental sectors. The highest-relevance calls include HORIZON-CL6-2026-02-FARM2FORK-11, addressing holistic microbiome research for sustainable food systems (98% relevance), and HORIZON-CL6-2027-02-FARM2FORK-07, focusing on commercializing food systems microbiome solutions (95% relevance). Additional high-impact opportunities span livestock sustainability, cancer prediction, soil antimicrobial resistance, aquatic bioremediation, and AI-powered foodome characterization. Key themes encompass farm-to-fork sustainability, one-health approaches, zero-pollution initiatives, and bioeconomy standardization. The analysis demonstrates microbiome science's expanding role in addressing global challenges including food security, disease prevention, environmental remediation, and antimicrobial resistance, offering substantial funding potential for organizations developing microbiome-based solutions and technologies.

Researchers have developed a field-deployable diagnostic assay combining recombinase polymerase amplification (RPA) with CRISPR/Cas12a technology to rapidly detect African swine fever virus (ASFV). This duplex assay represents a significant advancement in point-of-care diagnostics for animal health monitoring. The integrated RPA-CRISPR/Cas12a platform enables sensitive and specific viral detection outside traditional laboratory settings, addressing critical needs for disease surveillance in remote or resource-limited environments. By coupling RPA's rapid nucleic acid amplification with Cas12a's precise molecular recognition capabilities, the assay achieves both high sensitivity and specificity while maintaining operational simplicity. This innovation is particularly valuable for African swine fever, a devastating viral disease affecting global pig populations with no approved vaccine or treatment. The field-deployable nature of this technology enables faster diagnostic confirmation, supporting rapid response protocols and disease containment strategies. The research, published in Archives of Virology in September 2026, contributes essential diagnostic tools for veterinary disease management and biosecurity operations.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) represent critical and interconnected global health threats, particularly within hospital environments. This comprehensive analysis explores the emergence and spread of multidrug-resistant pathogens in healthcare settings, examining their complex resistance mechanisms and the role healthcare practices play in both exacerbating and mitigating these challenges. HAIs, defined as infections occurring 48 hours or more after hospitalization, pose severe risks to patient safety when combined with AMR, resulting in increased morbidity, mortality, and healthcare expenditures. The article evaluates key mitigation strategies including antimicrobial stewardship programs, infection prevention and control protocols, comprehensive surveillance systems, healthcare professional education, and sustainable healthcare policies. Understanding the complex interaction between HAIs and AMR is essential for designing robust healthcare systems capable of effectively addressing evolving microbial threats. These strategies are vital for protecting the efficacy of current and future antimicrobial therapies while ensuring long-term healthcare sustainability and safeguarding public health globally.

Multidrug-resistant pathogens represent a critical challenge in hospital environments with significant consequences for patient safety, healthcare costs, and public health systems worldwide. This comprehensive review examines strategies for controlling MDR pathogen transmission through integrated microbiological surveillance, rigorous infection prevention and control protocols, and judicious antibiotic stewardship. The article emphasizes that sustainable infection management requires coordination across multiple levels—environmental stewardship, staff training, and policy alignment at local, national, and global scales. The impact of MDR organisms extends across clinical, economic, social, and policy dimensions, as their ability to resist treatment and proliferate rapidly in healthcare settings necessitates a coordinated, multifaceted intervention strategy. The document outlines best practices and emerging approaches for combating antimicrobial resistance while highlighting that without swift and comprehensive action, MDR pathogens could fundamentally compromise the safety and efficacy of modern healthcare delivery systems. Global cooperation and continuous innovation are emphasized as essential components of this complex public health response.

This study evaluated the impact of on-plate formic acid pretreatment on MALDI-TOF MS identification accuracy for Gram-positive bacteria in routine clinical microbiology laboratories. Researchers analyzed 148 unique Gram-positive clinical isolates using two preparation methods: direct transfer and on-plate formic acid pretreatment. Results demonstrated that formic acid pretreatment significantly improved species-level identification rates from 27.1% to 76.2%, with overall identification rates increasing from 79.7% to 99.3% compared to direct transfer. Mean MALDI-TOF MS log scores were substantially higher with formic acid treatment, and the most prominent improvements were observed in Staphylococcus species, particularly coagulase-negative staphylococci. The authors recommend implementing a pragmatic diagnostic algorithm where formic acid pretreatment is applied reflexively to isolates with scores below 2.0 and as a primary method for staphylococci and uncommon Gram-positive organisms, thereby enhancing diagnostic accuracy and reliability in routine MALDI-TOF MS applications.

Nanomaterials are revolutionizing point-of-care testing (POCT) for pathogen detection by enabling rapid, accurate diagnostics outside traditional laboratory settings. This comprehensive review by Wu, Wang, Ye, He, and Jiang examines how nanotechnology enhances biosensor performance for infectious disease identification. The article explores the integration of nanomaterials—including nanoparticles, nanofibers, and nanostructures—into diagnostic platforms that leverage signal amplification mechanisms to improve sensitivity and specificity. Key applications include immunosensors and DNA-based detection systems designed for rapid pathogen identification. The significance of nanomaterial-enabled POCT lies in its potential to democratize diagnostics, providing fast, cost-effective testing in resource-limited settings, emergency departments, and field environments. By eliminating the need for sophisticated laboratory infrastructure, these technologies address critical gaps in infectious disease surveillance and outbreak response, particularly important in contexts where timely diagnosis directly impacts treatment outcomes and disease containment.

# Professional Summary CRISPR-Cas systems have emerged as powerful tools for detecting infectious diseases and cancer biomarkers, offering significant advances in diagnostic technology. This research explores the application of Cas-based detection platforms that leverage the specificity and sensitivity of CRISPR molecular machinery for identifying pathogenic organisms and disease-associated markers. The techniques described utilize modified Cas enzymes and guide RNAs to achieve rapid, accurate detection of target nucleic acids or proteins at clinically relevant concentrations. Key findings demonstrate that Cas-based systems can detect multiple disease markers simultaneously while maintaining high specificity and reducing false positives compared to conventional diagnostic methods. The approach offers potential advantages including shortened turnaround times, reduced need for complex laboratory infrastructure, and compatibility with point-of-care testing environments. These developments matter significantly for global health, as they could enable faster diagnosis of infectious diseases and early cancer detection in resource-limited settings, ultimately improving patient outcomes and supporting public health surveillance efforts while reducing diagnostic costs and complexity.

Infectious disease management is increasingly embracing precision medicine approaches where therapeutic decisions depend on diagnostic insights into pathogen characteristics, host immune responses, and drug mechanisms. Diagnostics have become central to this paradigm shift, enabling clinicians to identify resistance determinants and virulence factors rather than relying on empirical treatment protocols. This diagnostic-guided stewardship is particularly critical for combating antimicrobial resistance, offering one of the most effective strategies to preserve existing drug efficacy while novel therapeutics are developed. However, realizing this potential requires integrating two often-disconnected evidence bases: the microbiological and immunological foundations of diagnostic tests, including which resistance mechanisms and host biomarkers they detect and their reliability in predicting treatment outcomes, alongside clinical performance data demonstrating whether these assays actually improve prescribing practices and patient outcomes in real-world settings. The COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing antimicrobial resistance challenges have underscored how diagnostic capability becomes the rate-limiting step in infectious disease response. This research initiative brings together microbiologists, immunologists, clinicians, and diagnostics experts to establish comprehensive evidence linking pathogen and host biology to diagnostic-guided antimicrobial decision-making, encompassing pathogen markers, resistance detection methods, host-response biomarkers, analytical validation, and rapid point-of-care diagnostics implementation across diverse healthcare settings.