Actiphage detects mycobacterium tuberculosis in latent TB patients associated with progression to active tuberculosis
- Actiphage provided the first concordant evidence in humans to detect incipient TB in early infection.
- Actiphage had high correlation of 73% for positive test results in active pulmonary TB (PTB) patients.
- Actiphage found 17% QFT positive pts to be Incipient, with 2 patients progressing to active TB after 7 months.
- Actiphage results in remaining LTBI cohort (15), healthy controls (28) 100% negative.
- Actiphage had a sensitivity of 73% and specificity of 100% in symptomatic patients with suspected PTB.
- Actiphage had a specificity of 94% for all patients, with no change in sensitivity.
Verma, R. et al, ‘A novel high sensitivity bacteriophage-based assay identifies low level M. tuberculosis bacteraemia in immunocompetent patients with active and incipient TB’, Clinical Infectious Diseases, ciz548 – view the paper
Actiphage detects mycobacterium tuberculosis DNA associated with progression in incipient tuberculosis patients
- First study to isolate Mtb in LTBI representing uncontrolled infection, distinguishing LTBI from incipient TB.
- There was a significant association of Actiphage detection of Mtb DNA with imaging and microbiological results of incipient TB.
- Screening with Actiphage had high sensitivity and specificity for stratifying TB risk in recently exposed household contacts.
Jee Whang Kim et al, A novel bacteriophage-based assay stratifies tuberculosis risk in recent household contacts of pulmonary tuberculosis: A prospective observational cohort study – view the paper
Presented at 32nd European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases April 2022
Ongoing Actiphage clinical studies
- High TB burden tuberculosis settings. Studies in South Africa and Zambia and planned study with R2D2 in Philippines. Visit the R2D2 website here.
- Genotyping drug-resistant mycobacterium tuberculosis. Project to evaluate Actiphage in conjunction with sequencing to determine genotypes associated with drug resistance on a variety of isolates of M. tuberculosis.
- Further trials are underway in the UK and internationally.
Phage-based diagnostic research
- Evidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex bacteraemia in intradermal skin test positive cattle detected using phage-RPA
Convery T., Rees C. et al, ‘Evidence of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex bacteraemia in intradermal skin test positive cattle detected using phage-RPA‘, Virulence (2016), 7 (7), 779-788 – view the paper.
