Balik-scientist develops low-cost TB test

MANILA, Philippines – A Filipino scientist is introducing a low-cost tool for detecting tuberculosis (TB) and multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis in the country.

Dr. Francisco Chung Jr., a professor in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of the Philippines’ College of Medicine, said he is currently establishing a diagnostic approach to detect the presence of TB in a patient.

Chung is currently working on a project dubbed “Microscopic Observation Drug Susceptibility assay or MODS” to be funded by the Department of Science and Technology under its Balik-Scientist Program.

Chung said MODS is a culture method found to be a more sensitive, faster and cheaper test than current culture-based tests for TB.

The MODS, he said, involves direct observation of mycrobacterium tuberculosis and simultaneously yields drug-resistance.

“The good thing about it is that you can determine whether a subject has TB, at the same time you can even establish if that kind of TB is drug resistant or not,” Chung told reporters.

Chung said a diagnostic kit for TB costs around P6,000 in government hospitals.

“With our MODS it would cost around P2,000,” Chung said, adding that the system would be available in state hospitals by the last quarter of the year or early 2010.

Chung said he, along with other Filipino researchers, is also planning to make the tool available in rural centers nationwide.

Chung said at least 75 Filipinos afflicted with TB die every day, placing the Philippines at number eight in the world and number two in the Western Pacific region in terms of persons dying of TB.

Aside from the MODS project, Chung is also working on a project to determine why some cancer cells are not responding to particular chemotherapeutic agents like imatinid and gleevec. – Helen Flores