The World Health Oragnization’s move in 2011 to focus on new diagnostics to diagnose tuberculosis faster and more accurately than the 120+ year old sputum tests has created a rush for diagnostic developers to solve that problem. One company has set about developing a more accurate test that uses proteins to detect active TB antibodies in the blood.
Sam Niedbala, TB Biosciences founder, is a Lehigh University professor and was also a co-founder of OraSure Technologies (NASDAQ:OSUR), the company which developed an FDA approved test kit for HIV. His company’s test claims to have a 90 percent accuracy rate compared with the current norm of 40 percent to 60 percent for the sputum test.
The company, started in May and based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, closed a $1.5 million Series A round led by Originate Ventures and and included Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania and the NYU Innovation Venture Fund. The funding will go towards clinical trials and product development.
Among Originate’s other portfolio companies are surgical glue developer Adhezion Biomedical, medication management firm CareKinesis, cardiovascular medical device company MicroInterventional Devices, ProtonMedia which has a clinical trial collaboration platform, and Thermal Therapeutics Systems, which has a pump system with disposable smart bags to deliver heated chemotherapy drugs for intraperitoneal cancer.
About 20 million people are tested for tuberculosis each year. But one-third of active TB cases are never diagnosed, reported, or treated, according to a report by the Treatment Action Group reviewing drug pipelines for HIV and TB. That means 3 million people are walking around with undiagnosed TB which cold be lead to death or be transmitted to others.
Several groups are working to develop diagnostic tests to advance the sputem test which was originally developed in the 1880s, according to the report. Among them are Alere backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, LabCorb, which acquired the license for the technology from Sequella and Cepheid.
