IRVINE, Calif., May 15 /PRNewswire/ -- ImmPORT Therapeutics Inc., a California company with a leading technology platform for antigen discovery, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), a Geneva-based non-profit organization, and the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI), a not-for-profit research corporation in Newark, New Jersey, today announced a collaboration to identify antigens useful for the diagnosis of tuberculosis (TB).
"In response to the ever-growing threat to public health by infectious diseases, ImmPORT has developed a revolutionary technology that offers a fast and cost-effective platform for developing diagnostics and vaccines," said Dr. Xiaowu Liang, Chief Technical Officer of ImmPORT. "We are very pleased that our technology can be put to use against a serious global health concern such as tuberculosis."
"FIND aims to reduce disease burden in developing countries through development of affordable diagnostic tests for poverty-related diseases. ImmPORT's technology enables us to identify and screen all antigens in the genome of the TB-causing bacterium in a fraction of the time, and at a fraction of the cost, of conventional technologies," said Dr. Giorgio Roscigno, CEO of FIND. "The goal is to produce an accurate, point-of-care diagnostic test for TB based on an antibody marker test that is as easy to use as a pregnancy test."
Dr. David Perlin, President of PHRI, said, "this collaboration represents a major commitment to create a 'next generation' diagnostic product for TB, which can help mitigate the enormous global impact of this disease. We are delighted to have ImmPORT and FIND as partners in this important endeavor."
As stated in the collaborative development agreement signed today, a multi-phase program will be supported by FIND under which antigens of diagnostic value for TB will be identified. PHRI shall make its intellectual property available for the program and will identify antibody markers of the TB-causing bacterium using ImmPORT's whole-proteome microarray chip technology platform.
Mark Perkins, Chief Scientific Officer of FIND, states, "The development of a simple and accurate serodiagnostic test for tuberculosis has been tried for many years without much success. Only a small number of antigen targets have been used in such tests and, until now, no strategic approach to identify the best antigens has ever been mounted. This project will allow us to interrogate the entire proteome of the pathogen, and hopefully to identify a small subset of antigens that can successfully identify TB."
About ImmPORT
ImmPORT is a privately held biotech company with innovative technologies that offer unprecedented advantages for rapid development of safer and more effective vaccines and diagnostics against infectious diseases. The Company's high throughput proteome microarray chip fabrication and screening platform provides an order of magnitude improvement over current antigen/biomarker discovery technologies. The technology also has potential applications in other areas of drug discovery. For more information please visit: www.immport-inc.com.
About FIND
For more information, please visit www.finddiagnostics.org.
About PHRI
For more information please visit: www.phri.org.
ImmPORT Therapeutics Inc.