Development of an affordable human diagnostic for active TB suitable for the UK and for India and other low resource markets

Tuberculosis (TB) is a persistent health problem in the UK and worldwide. There has been a steady increase of TB rates in the UK over the last three decades, with the disease burden now one of the highest in Europe. In 2013 the WHO reported that in India in 2012 2.8M active TB cases were diagnosed, with an estimate of 25.2M individuals with presumptive TB, suggesting a diagnosis “success rate” of only 1 in 9. This application is to fund an industry-led, industrial research project to develop an affordable new TB diagnostic with the aim of increasing this diagnostic success rate in the four highest burden TB countries, which account for nearly half of all TB cases detected globally each year. The project combines a powerful set of TB diagnostic blood biomarkers together with low cost lateral flow technology that will address the worldwide need for a low-cost screening tool for active TB and pave the way for further development of the biomarkers for other forms of the disease, enabling better disease treatment and containment.