FIND and Biotec to launch cheap fast TB test

The London, UK-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics says that, as part of its public and private collaboration with Biotec Laboratories, its has completed the development of FASTPlaque-Response, a new diagnostic for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis that provides results in just two days, a significant improvement over conventional methods, which take weeks.

FASTPlaque-Response is able to detect resistance to the critical TB drug rifampicin directly from the sputum of advanced patients with accuracy comparable to current conventional methods. The groups noted that the new test will cost less than one tenth that of more technically-demanding molecular dignostics, the only other rapid ones for MDR-TB currently available. Biotec is about to launch the new product globally, with the initial focus in countries with a known high disease burden, such as Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, Central Asia, India, China and South Africa.