Development of Tuberculosis Diagnostic Kit

Pulmonary tuberculosis is one of the most important infectious diseases in human with high mortality. Early diagnosis followed by antibiotic treatment is the only way for control of the disease. However, most of commercial tuberculosis diagnostic kits are of moderate sensitivity. Oncoprobe Inc. recently developed a tuberculosis diagnostic kit (HR-103) based on detection of antibody against Mycobacterium tuberculosis in serum. The main purpose of this project is to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the kit in detection of pulmonary tuberculosis from saliva, urine, pleura and serum samples.Capilia TB assay and another Immunochromatographic assay such as ESAT-6 and CFP-10 based or other PCR based immunochromatographic assay will be tried to detection tuberculous disease.