Colorimetric In-Situ Hybridization in Clinical Virology: Development of Automated Technology

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Abstract
The goals of clinical virology, to generate accurate, sensitive and specific diagnoses as rapidly as possible, have not changed, but the methods to achieve these goals have undergone a revolution. The same techniques of molecular biology which proved so valuable in elucidating basic biologic properties of the viruses have been found to be applicable in a diagnostic setting. Through the adoption of monoclonal antibody and nucleic acid hybridization techniques, the clinical virology lab has been the indicator of things to come in microbiology in general. Because the culture of viruses is labor-intensive, expensive and often slow, the laboratory has been eager to adopt alternative methods to complement and streamline the “gold standard” of viral culture. The growing recognition of the clinical significance of noncultivatable viruses such as rota virus and human papilloma virus has also given impetus to the application of monoclonal antibodies and nucleic acid hybridization to these problems.