Application of case study to introduce medical students to molecular biology techniques used in HIV diagnostics

Abstract

Diagnostic molecular biology is a fast developing discipline of laboratory medicine widely used in numerous medical branches such as oncology, hematology, immunology, internal medicine, or infectious diseases, which will certainly have a major impact on clinical medicine in the near future. Nowadays, educational process is forced to face the quickly growing overflow of easily accessible data and properly guide the students not to be lead astray in the information chaos. Hence, in view of the foregoing, it appears obvious that modern medical education should put particular stress on selective acquiring, interpreting, and applying integrated multidisciplinary knowledge rather than on just absorbing and memorizing huge amount of scattered information. The presented case study aims at familiarizing the students with basic molecular biology techniques such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, Western blot, and quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. Importantly, it is not limited only to discussing and learning the principles of the assays mentioned earlier, but it also shows their practical application in a particular diagnostic process and give the guidelines on how to explain and interpret exemplary results. In parallel, the way the case study is constructed allows a tutor to lead students into discussion on clinical aspects related to HIV infection what should eventually create complete picture of a HIV diagnostic process, thereby integrating basic knowledge of molecular biology laboratory techniques, HIV biology, and immunological response. © 2019 International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, 47(3):355–360, 2019.