ISRAEL: Israeli technology company claims to create a medical device that quickly detects HIV infection

Record ID: 395562

  • Title: ISRAEL: Israeli technology company claims to create a medical device that quickly detects HIV infection
  • Date: 20th August 2007
  • Summary: (L!2) HAIFA, ISRAEL (AUGUST 12, 2007) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF BUILDING AT RAMBAM MEDICAL CENTRE DOCTOR SHIMON POLLACK, DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY, IMMUNOLOGY AND AIDS AT RAMBAM MEDICAL CENTRE, PULLING BOOK FROM LIBRARY SHELF AND LOOKING THROUGH IT (SOUNDBITE) (English) DOCTOR SHIMON POLLACK, DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY, IMMUNOLOGY AND AIDS AT RAMBAM MEDI
  • Embargoed: 4th September 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel, Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Health,Science
  • Reuters ID: LVA8QAFKEGB5ND1HIIT3W1DLYJNI
  • Story Text: An Israeli firm, Smart Biotech, says it has invented a medical device that dramatically shortens the wait period between HIV infection, and detection.
    An Israeli biotech company is claiming their new invention, a tool that helps speed the diagnosis of the presence of HIV in a blood sample, has the potential to save thousands of lives.
    The company, Smart Biotech, located outside of Tel Aviv, says their new device, called the SMARTube, isn't a new HIV test. It's a method that treats a blood sample, stimulating it to produce antigens to HIV, if the blood is infected.
    Dr. Tamar Jehuda-Cohen invented the SMARTube. She says normally it can take months for a person infected with HIV to produce antigens to the disease.
    It's the presence of these antigens that HIV tests check for. The problem is that a person can be infected with HIV, but not test positive for months after the infection. With SMARTube a blood sample can be treated and tested, with a result known in about a one week, according to Dr. Jehuda-Cohen.
    "SMARTube has a special solution inside it. And this solution has in it the capability of squeezing the process that happens in the human body in three months into three to five days. So now, when a person comes to be tested, the blood - instead of going directly to be tested - it goes through the SMARTube. It gets incubated for three to five days at 37 degrees, which is body temperature, and the immune system inside the blood is being told, 'rush up and do what you know to do and probably will do three months from now.' And after this incubation, you just test it with a current test and if the person got infected, the answer will be positive," Dr. Jehuda-Cohen said.
    Smart Biotech says the implications of speeding this process will save lives. By informing HIV patients of their status faster, it will allow them to seek treatment sooner, and change behaviours that might spread the disease.
    Smart Biotech also says that blood banks will be able to quickly and safely test blood supplies, allowing health care workers to accurately determine which blood is readily available for donation.
    "There is nothing like this in the world. It is a change of the way we ask a question in diagnostics. Instead of asking what there is in the body, we're using the tube in order to tell us what we would be able to see if we waited long enough. But usually we don't have that time to wait. No. There's nobody with a time machine like that," Dr. Jehuda-Cohen said.
    But some in the medical community are not yet convinced that the SMARTube will make a significant difference in the fight to prevent the spread of HIV. Dr. Shimon Pollack is the director of the Institute of Allergy, Immunology and AIDS at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel. He says Smart Biotech needs to publish more research on the SMARTube, and that current tools have already cut down the diagnostic time in determining HIV infection.
    "I don't see any advantage of this method because we have now other methods like PCR, like P24 antigenamia that we can measure and we can state the diagnosis of HIV ten to twelve days after the infection. I don't see any advantage of the SMARTube that will shorten it in a very significant time.
    Maybe it will shorten it in a day or two days, and I don't see any advantage of this shortening of the time," Dr. Pollack told Reuters.
    SMART Biotech has registered the SMARTube for use in the European Common Market, South Africa, and China. Company officials say the device is already being used in Romania, and China. They say they are gearing up production, in anticipation of world-wide demand.
    SMART Biotech refused to talk about the price of the SMARTube, saying only that the company is determined to make the device affordable for those fighting the spread of HIV and AIDS wherever they may be throughout the world.
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