The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) will soon commercialise its newly developed technology which is a diagnostic luciferase reporter phage assay kit for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis directly from processed sputum samples.

The premier research organisation has invited companies interested in commercializing diagnostic luciferase reporter phage assay kit for the detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis directly from processed sputum
samples.  This assay can be used for detecting latent and active tuberculosis.

According to senior officials in the ICMR, there are several salient features to this technology developed by the ICMR.  The ICMR has filed a patent application for this technology.

Officials said that the technology is a very promising candidate for drug susceptibility testing and diagnosing Mycobacterium tuberculosis more rapidly as the assay allows detection of viable Mycobacterium tuberculosis in clinical samples.  It is used as an alternative to antibiotics to control the overgrowth of normal flora in processed sputum samples.  The kit comprises of Phage lysin, Luciferase reporter phage (LRP), G7H9, 0.1M
CaCl2, D-Luciferin and is useful as an effective tool for quick diagnosis of
tuberculosis in a subject.

The new technology is a promising technique to diagnose actively growing tubercle bacilli present in sputum samples and the assay is more rapid and sensitive to diagnose tuberculosis as compared to existing methods and can be effectively used in detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis in wide range of clinical samples. Besides, it is the only available growth based method to diagnose presence of latent cells of tubercle bacilli. Moreover,  the assay is quick, very simple and economically viable.