The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, which works with WHO to create quality control standards for rapid tests, recommends spot checking in each batch of tests ordered to ensure the tests were not poorly manufactured, or had been damaged in transit or storage.

Cellestis is proud to be exploring opportunities to enhance the global effort to eliminate TB. Cellestis is an industry partner of FIND (the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) and the Stop-TB Partnership.

Through partnerships, parallel grant financing for specialized TB diagnostics has been secured from the International Drug Purchase Facility (UNITAID) through the EXPAND-TB Project which is a collaborative effort of WHO/Global Laboratory Initiative, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics and the Global Drug Facility.

The authors of this latest assessment stress that, “There are a clear set of criteria related to local conditions that need to be considered in deciding the best diagnostic test for a particular country”. The assessment was undertaken by the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and WHO’s Global Malaria Programme. It is available from the TDR website.

EXPAND-TB is a UNITAID-funded joint collaboration between FIND, WHO, the Global Laboratory Initiative (GLI) and the Stop TB Partnership Global Drug Facility (GDF). The project aims to narrow the diagnostic gap in MDR-TB control in 27 countries by increasing access to new diagnostic technologies, accompanied by the requisite know-how for technology transfer, and ensuring that new technologies are properly integrated within TB control programmes.

The evaluation programme is co-sponsored by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), WHO Global Malaria Programme (GMP) and the WHO Regional Office for the Western Pacific.Testing is performed at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“It makes it possible to do something that’s not possible for many things sold into developing countries,” says Mark Perkins, chief scientific officer at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), one of the organisations behind the WHO’s evaluation study. “And that is to allow ministries of health who don’t have the staff or the capabilities to do this kind of analysis to decide what to buy.”

Cellestis is proud to be exploring opportunities to enhance the global effort to eliminate TB. Cellestis is an industry partner of FIND (the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics) and the Stop-TB Partnership.

“Most HIV-positive patients with TB might still end up with only a few micro-bacteria in their sputum because they don’t have a good system that can sequester the micro-bacteria,” says Giorgio Roscigno, chief executive of the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND). “So co-infection with HIV has made the disease much more complicated to diagnose.”

An international collaboration that includes the WHO, the Global Laboratory Initiative, and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) is working to upgrade and modernize national TB reference laboratories in 27 developing countries in an effort known as the EXPAND-TB Project...Lesotho Health and Social Welfare Minister Mphu K. Ramatlapeng, who took her post in 2007, marveled in a 2009 interview about the transformation of her national TB laboratory. She said that FIND’s assistance was particularly critical in moving the project ahead...

WHO estimates that only 7% of MDR-TB cases worldwide were diagnosed in 2008. WHO is currently working with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), the Stop TB Partnership's Global Drug Facility (GDF) and the Global Laboratory Initiative (GLI) with financial support from UNITAID in a partnership called EXPAND TB to upgrade laboratories and improve diagnosis.

The new diagnostic tools being introduced in the IRL are the latest in TB diagnostics, developed by Switzerland-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) and Hain Life Science and now endorsed for use in high TB burden countries by the WHO.

Non-invasive tests also reduce the potential for HIV exposure, said scientist David Bell at Geneva-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND). And non-invasive tests are preferable particularly when surveying a disease outbreak, as even a small amount of pain involved in a procedure can be a disincentive for people to seek healthcare.

Le soutien vient de FIND (Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics), une fondation à but non lucratif basée à Genève, qui oeuvre pour la mise au point de nouveaux outils de diagnostic pour les maladies associées à la pauvreté.

Ethiopia’s National Laboratory Master Plan spearheaded the renovations, which were supported by ICAP, the Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief/U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics.

Des chercheurs genevois ont trouvé de nouveau moyens de dépister plus précocement l'affection causée par la mouche tsé-tsé.
Tribune de Genève, le 26 aoÃt 2006

Several agencies, groups and individuals have contributed to the development of this resource. These include the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), the Global Laboratory Initiative (GLI), and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

David Bell, a scientist at the Geneva-based non-profit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, told IRIN that new approaches were needed to diagnose febrile diseases in addition to malaria. "There needs to be a lot of investment in diagnostics appropriate for this [community] level to guide health workers to at least identify and treat, or refer, those patients who have a non-malarial infection that is likely to kill them. Most African children who die have diseases other than malaria." 

The website has been established by the Stop TB Partnership's New Diagnostics Working Group in collaboration with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, the Global Laboratory Initiative and the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics leads the effort on new diagnostic tools that could reduce TB incidence by 13 percent to 42 percent. Diagnostics and treatment go hand-in-hand because new diagnostic tests have an epidemiological effect by moving people to treatment more rapidly. The three diagnostic methods examined in the study achieve their improvements in TB incidence and mortality fairly rapidly. The four-month, two-month, and 10-day novel active disease treatment regimens produce 10 percent, 23 percent, and 27 percent reductions in TB incidence by 2050 compared to 2015.

Two initiatives to address the neglect of diagnosis have made an appearance in TropIKA.net during the last few days. The African Network for Drugs and Diagnostics Innovation (ANDi) has announced that it will present its strategy and business plan in October, and the TropIKA.net blog links to an interview with Joseph Ndung’u of the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) about the search for a new diagnostic test for trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness).

Speaking at the event, WHO's Technical Officer, Accessible quality-assured diagnostics, Dr. Jane Cunningham, who was represented by Dr. Caroline Asiimwe (FIND), noted that RDTs have become imperative in combating malaria at community levels, where skilled personnel were not available. She noted that the latest technology in malaria management is cost effective as it usually takes 15 minutes to deliver results. 

The State Tuberculosis Demonstration and Training Centre (STDC) has recently received the equipment for the MGIT- 960, provided by the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), Geneva, which will start training staff for the new method from August.

According to FIND (The Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics): "Only 19 per cent of the world's TB cases are detected by the most widely used test, sputum smear microscopy, which is at best 40 per cent sensitive. (Over 90 million sputum smear tests a year, according to Nantulya 2006). Technology must move beyond the standard sputum microscopy test discovered in the 1880s if diagnostic rates are to improve.

A Stop TB Partnership delegation on a high-level visit to South Africa was greeted today by Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. Members included Irene Koek, Chair of the Stop TB Partnership Coordinating Board; Dr. Marcos Espinal, Executive Secretary of the Stop TB Partnership; Dr. Giorgio Roscigno, CEO of FIND; Dr. Leopold Blanc, Coordinator in the WHO Stop TB Department; and Dr. BAH Keita, Regional Adviser for Tuberculosis for the WHO African Region. They also met at length with Health Minister Dr. Aaron Motsoaledi to discuss the findings of the recent TB programme review led by WHO and several partners and the way forward to accelerate action on TB and TB/HIV.

Up to tens of thousands of people in Africa who are infected with trypanosomiasis, also known as sleeping sickness, go undiagnosed because the only way to detect the deadly infection is through blood exams and a painful expensive lower back puncture, according to the Geneva-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND).

Among the most ambitious projects to date was the recent evaluation of rapid malaria tests, whose findings were published on 24 May 2009 (see www.who/tdr), shortly before World Malaria Day. Forty-one malaria tests were evaluated at US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) laboratories as part of a major collaboration between TDR, WPRO and FIND. The RDTs were subjected to stringent tests to determine not only accuracy but also how well they stand up to tropical temperatures.

The Primo Star iLED was originally developed together with FIND, the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, for the fast and reliable LED fluorescence based testing of tuberculosis and has been on the market since October 2008. 

As the need for rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) rises, manufacturers face the challenge of improving test standards while also increasing supply, says David Bell, head of malaria diagnostics at the Foundation for Innovative Diagnostics (FIND). There is also a growing demand for tests that identify low levels of infection in people without symptoms, adds Bell. This follows a rise in health programmes that aim to eliminate malaria, not just treat patients.

FIND scientist Ndung'u told IRIN he is sticking with tsetse flies. “Whereas the impact [of our work] on humans may not be so obvious, the link to Africa’s agriculture is what makes tsetse flies so important. With oxen to pull plows, you can produce 10 times more, feed yourself and your children and have enough to sell at the market.” Article en français

Most African countries have signed the Maputo Declaration pledging to develop and implement national laboratory policies, build laboratory capacity as part of their primary healthcare strategy and set up integrated laboratory networks at the community, district, regional and national levels for quality assurance training and sending samples from one laboratory to the next, said FIND’s Roscigno.

A key objective of Membership is therefore to create strategic relationships with stakeholders in the biotech sector, in particular those who have a common interest in supporting the long-term vision of the CPGR. The CPGR’s immediate focus in the field of biomedicine lies on enabling translational research related to key African diseases such as TB, HIV/AIDS, and malaria, amongst others.

The new test, developed in partnership with the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ), and funded by the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), will leverage the power of Cepheid's GeneXpert(R)System to deliver a highly accurate diagnosis of the disease in less than two hours. Read more Diagnostic TB Test Developed by UMDNJ Physician Expected to Provide More Efficient Results

World Health Organization (WHO) and the non-profit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) have released the largest, independent laboratory evaluation of malaria rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for World Malaria Day, which shows that while some tests accurately detect even slight traces of malaria in tropical temperatures, others give false results, missing potentially life-saving diagnoses.

In the end, the arrangement was a success: In addition to supporting patient treatment, she helped MSF launch a study, funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, which brought expensive diagnostic equipment to the laboratory, reducing the time it took to diagnose an MDR TB patient from 8 weeks to 10 days.

Another group emerging from the TDR program is the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND). In 2003, FIND was launched in conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and represents an expansion of ongoing efforts to find and develop new diagnostics for neglected infectious diseases. FIND and the TDR program have developed a joint work plan to deliver new and affordable tools for TB to the public sector. The establishment of these organizations to address specific needs is an example of how the TDR program can initiate new activities in partnership with other organizations.

Around 1.1 lakh Indians suffering from tuberculosis are developing drug resistance every year. What's worse, at present, it takes over three months to confirm a single drug resistant case. This has now made the health ministry join hands with Geneva-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics to test new age diagnostic tools that will detect multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) in just two days.

Through the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, Small said, molecular diagnostics are becoming available that will report in hours rather than months whether a person has drug-resistant TB. He expects rapid diagnostic tests to be available by 2012.

Dr Adhanom has also announced, at a press conference in Addis Ababa, the opening of a reference laboratory for the evaluation of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for malaria. The testing centre, to be housed at the Ethiopian Health and Nutrition Research Institute (EHNRI), will join two other centres, one in Cambodia and the other in the Philippines, in a global network of laboratories designated by World Health Organization and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics. The laboratories allow countries that have procured malaria RDTs for use in the public sector to evaluate their quality and performance before they are distributed.

"It’s a common misconception that diagnostics don’t need to perform as well in the developing world as they do in the developed world," says Mark D. Perkins, a physician and the chief scientific officer at the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics, in Geneva. "If anything, the quality of diagnostics in developing countries needs to be even better than those in developed countries," he says.

Kakaire A. Kirunda

Merrill Goozner

Alain Jourdan

(english translation)

Rédaction

Fabrice Delaye

(english translation)

Gaspard Kühn

Lisa Schlein

Tatum Anderson

HT Correspondent

Martha Kerr

Katherine Tweed

Belinda Beresford

Tamil Nadu

Pere P. Simarro, et al.

Kakaire Kirunda, Uganda

Salmaan Keshavjee, et al.

Robert Grant

Roche Applied Science and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (Find) will explore development of projects in the area of in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) products for poverty-related diseases.

This series of papers was written following the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Diagnostics Forum

In November, Johns Hopkins University scientists reported the first successful screening technique based on DNA from saliva or urine samples, rather than from blood. Researchers from the Geneva-based Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND) have also devised a DNA-based test that, unlike other molecular tests, does not have to be sent away to a lab.

FIND Chief Scientific Officer featured in NY Times article