Tuberculosis (TB)

Tuberculosis has become a global disease with its reemergence in the western countries in the last decade. TB kills yearly 3 million people, more than any other infectious disease. According to the estimates of the WHO about 2 billion individuals are infected world-wide with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of TB. Although, the TB bacterium was identified 100 years ago, there is still no vaccine and the diagnostic methods available suffer from poor sensitivity and specificity and are either time consuming or too expensive. HIV and the MDR (multiple drug resistant) TB has strongly decreased the success of treatment with available antibiotics. To help improve the TB situation, Lionex has dedicated itself to the following areas:

We have developed a number of hightly purified, recombinant mycobacterial antigens which are suitable for testing for the purpose of diagnosis/vaccine development. As more and more antigens are identified, Lionex undertakes the expression and purification under standardised conditions for large scale production of the antigens.

-The recombinant antigens are being used to develop test for sero-diagnosis of TB. Special attention is being given to cost-effective and rapid tests.
-In addition, based on proprietary methods rapid molecular tests have been developed for differentiating tuberculous bacteria from the nontuberculous ones.
-A rapid 3 hour test for differentiating M. tuberculosis from M. bovis has been developed and is being prepared for marketing.