Current, Emerging, and Future Applications of Digital PCR in Non-Invasive Prenatal Diagnosis

Abstract

Digital PCR (dPCR) approaches have been developed for the detection of nucleic acids of low abundance, such as cell-free DNA, and represent an attractive and sensitive alternative to conventional methods, particularly in the field of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD). In this review, we present the principle of dPCR and its applications in the field of prenatal diagnosis from current and emerging uses, such as fetal gender determination, rhesus blood group D antigen genotyping, or monogenic disorders prenatal testing, to future applications, such as the diagnosis and monitoring of pregnancy-related disorders. We also address considerations for implementation of the method in a clinical laboratory and discuss the competiveness of dPCR over other technologies such as quantitative PCR or massively parallel sequencing.