BBI partners with the University of Dundee

http://www.bbisolutions.com/news/2014/09/01/hat/

BBI partners with the University of Dundee to develop prototype lateral flow test to diagnose Human African Trypanosomiasis

Due to their reputation in the industry and expertise in developing over 250 lateral flow devices, BBI Solutions were approached by Mike Ferguson, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, to consult on the development of this new lateral flow test.

Human African Trypanosomiasis (HAT), more commonly known as African Sleeping Sickness, is caused by two sub-species of Trypanosoma brucei.  T. b. gambiense accounts for approximately 95% of HAT infections and occurs across West and Central sub-Saharan Africa. The remaining infections are caused by T. b. rhodesiense in East and Southern Africa.

The aim of the project was to develop a lateral flow test to make diagnosis for HAT more rapid and readily available. The R&D team at BBI’s Dundee site, in particular Steven Wall, R&D Manager, worked with the university to develop a concept test for single and dual antigen labels for both blood and serum.
Each body of work involved a short proof of principle or generation of material. From a virtual test field, encouraging results were seen for both the single and dual antigen test result.

In the research article by Mike Ferguson and colleagues, published on the 17th July 2014, the paper concluded that lateral flow technology offers advantages over the widely used Card Agglutination Test for Trypanosomiasis (CATT) with respect to the ‘‘affordable, user-friendly, rapid, equipment-free and deliverable to the people at need’’ criteria required for point-of-care tests in the field.  The results encourage further development of the dual-antigen device for clinical use.

here is the paper
http://www.plosntds.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pntd.0002976