1. The Development of Molecular Diagnosis Technology in China

The molecular diagnosis is a newly-emerged laboratory medicine technology, applying the principle and technology of molecular biology for disease diagnosis. It is one of the important frontier fields in the modern medicine development and its core is gene diagnosis technology.

China’s molecular diagnosis technology started between 60s and 70s in 20th century. At 80s, it appears the representative technologies including radionuclide labeling with nucleic acid probe, dot blot, southern blot and restriction fragment length polymorphism linkage analysis.

At 90s, with the wide application of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, the molecular diagnosis technology is greatly developed and entered the clinical lab phrase. Besides the hereditary diseases from single gene, tumors, infectious diseases, gene polymorphisms, polygenetic inherited diseases and other diseases are included in the range of molecular diagnosis, and almost all the laboratory methods are based on PCR.

Since the post-90s, China’s molecular diagnosis technology has presented three trends: first, with the initialization of the China Human Genome Project in (1994) and the official participation of the Global Human Genome Project (1999), the molecular diagnosis researchers have turned their attention from single gene to the genome of human beings; Second, the quantification of PCR and its application; Third, the development and application of gene chip technology.

2. The Application of Molecular Diagnosis Technology

(1) Infectious Diseases

(2) Genetic Diseases

(3) Tumors

3. The Future of Molecular Diagnosis in China

China has a huge population, so molecular diagnosis has wide application and bright future in China. In recent years, China’s molecular diagnosis technology made continuous breakthrough, which largely because of the Chinese government. The State Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Health of the General Logistics Department of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has required that the Newly-found Infectious Diseases Prevention Technology Research and Application Project should be regarded as one of China’s National Science and Technology Development Projects, and that the identification, detection, separation, authentication, tracking, precaution, diagnosis and treatment methods for infectious diseases and the related research should be emphasized in order to improve China’s scientific and technological level of infectious diseases.

With the implement of Human Genome Project and Post Genome Project, China’s molecular diagnosis technology will gain further development and improvement while facing the above challenges. It is the continuous development of molecular diagnosis that makes Chinese people aware the health monitoring and prevention from only paying attention on the disease diagnosis and treatment, thus improving the health level of the whole nation.