Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL), The University of Hong Kong (HKU) and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU) are deciding to launch their collaborative tuberculosis (TB) project to develop a deep-sequencing assay and its tailored bio-informatics pipeline. This aims to enable early and improved diagnosis of TB when there is an increasingly drug resistant strains of TB emerging world-wide with multi-drug resistance.

"The Faculty has always been at the forefront of medical research and development of new clinical services for the benefit of mankind. With our researchers' toil and persistence, we have made important contributions to the study and treatment of infectious diseases, and have made notable advances in studying drug resistance mechanisms of tuberculosis, which is highly prevalent in Southeast Asia", says Dr. W.C. Yam, scientific officer at the Department of Microbiology, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong.

"Developing and evaluating novel molecular tests for rapid pathogen identification and drug resistance detection, especially in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, is one of the major research topic under the thematic area of Complex Diseases and Microbial Infections", tells Dr. Siu K.H. Gilman, Department of Health Technology and Informatics, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

"TB is fatal in 1 in 20 cases. The treatment process is long: an early detection and appropriated treatment are key to stopping the spread of TB. The DeepChek Tuberculosis system developed in collaboration with The University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University can contribute to such efforts. TB is our first step in micro-biology", adds Dr. CB. Sayada, chief executive officer, of ABL.

Under the terms of agreement, The University of Hong Kong will provide data and knowledge, while The Hong Kong Polytechnic University will insure the TB assay development required to perform NGS sequencing. This assay will be used in combination with the DeepChek Tuberculosis software application. These will be validated with retrospective and prospective clinical specimens. ABL will optimise its DeepChek platform technology for this TB assay with whole genome sequencing data analysis and other TB specificities. Other terms of the agreement are not disclosed.