Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP): Current progress and future directions in rapid nucleic acid detection

Following the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an escalating demand for rapid and precise disease diagnostics. Nucleic acid detection technology, owing to its exceptional specificity and sensitivity, has increasingly gained prominence in disease diagnosis. However, traditional nucleic acid detection methods are constrained by expensive instrumentation, cumbersome procedures, and the requirement for specialized laboratory personnel, posing challenges for implementation in primary healthcare settings. Loop-mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP), an emerging nucleic acid amplification technique, circumvents the need for thermal cyclers and offers simplified operation, high sensitivity, specificity, short detection time, and robust resistance to inhibitors. These attributes make LAMP particularly suitable for point-of-care testing, community-level screening, and customs inspections. This review focuses on recent advancements in LAMP technology for rapid nucleic acid detection, encompassing the entire workflow from primer design, sample pre-treatment, core enzyme engineering and mutagenesis, reaction system optimization, detection methodologies, to common issues with LAMP technology. We synthesize global research progress in these areas, aiming to provide a reference basis for the development and application of LAMP in rapid nucleic acid testing.