Cellestis promises Danish deal will provide better TB diagnosis

Melbourne-based company Cellestis (ASX: CST) has signed an agreement with Danish company Statens Serum Institut (SSI) that it said signals a new era in tuberculosis testing and research.

The agreement gives Cellestis exclusive rights to use SSI's tuberculosis-specific proteins in Cellestis' Quantiferon platform technology.

Cellestis said that people in most parts of the world were routinely immunised against TB using the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine. Most BCG-vaccinated people who were not TB infected would give a positive response to existing tests for TB, such as the classical tuberculin skin test (Mantoux).

Clinical trials showed Cellestis' new TB test, incorporating SSI's TB-specific proteins, would overcome this problem by detecting only people with true TB infection, the company said.

The new test is also said to allow very early detection of ongoing infection, long before the individual developed symptoms of TB and became contagious.

Cellestis' managing director, Dr Tony Radford, said that the company had been trialling the test in collaboration with SSI, and had a good idea of which TB-specific proteins it would use in the new test.

"In trials, these proteins have enhanced the specificity of our Quantiferon system for TB to almost 100 per cent," he said.

Radford said the agreement also included patent coverage in most major markets beyond 2015, significantly extending Cellestis' existing patent coverage.

He said that the agreement was also a validation for Cellestis -- SSI, which is owned by the Danish government, was recognised as a leader in infectious disease control.

In a statement, SSI's head of TB research Dr Peter Andersen said the Cellestis collaboration had enabled SSI to combine the advantages of its TB-specific proteins with Cellestis' technology to create the simplest and easiest way to detect TB infection.

"This is a big opportunity for us," Radford said. "It expands our potential market, and extends our patent position in TB testing. We knew that BCG reactions were the major issue for accurate detection of TB. By overcoming them, our new test will raise the standard in TB diagnosis."

Earlier this year, Cellestis entered a collaboration with Japanese company Nichirei to test and distribute a TB diagnostic specifically for the Japanese market. Japan has declared TB a national emergency, and has near universal BCG vaccination and performs over 20 million screening tests for TB every year.