Know your HIV status in a few hours

HEALTH: Developed by Dr Lal PathLabs, the test promises faster, more accurate results at low cost.

In what may be good news for people and organisations working for the cause of HIV/AIDS, Dr Lal PathLabs, one of the country's largest laboratory testing firms, has developed an indigenous HIV quantitative test that promises to be cheaper, more accurate and faster than any other currently available in the country.

The test has been developed at the company's own research and development centre and will be made available within a week.

Arvind Lal, CMD, Dr Lal PathLabs explains, "At the time of testing for HIV, the HIV particles in the blood are described in terms of copies per ml. While tests made by foreign firms detect 50 copies per ml, our test will detect 14 copies per ml, making it much more sensitive and accurate."

Having reached its final stage of completion on August 1, the test will be launched pan-India by the August 19. Besides the accuracy of the test, another benefit will be the turnaround time, which will come down to a few hours.

Until now, one would wait almost a week for the test results. The test will also bring down the cost of HIV diagnosis by almost 40 per cent.

Lal explains the idea behind this test as being inspired by the decrease in HIV/AIDS drug prices, "Companies like Ranbaxy and Cipla have considerably brought down the cost of HIV/AIDS treatment by selling drugs at very low costs. So, I decided it was time for us to match step with them and lower diagnostic cost as well."

The only drawback will be transporting the samples because these will have to be stored in dry ice and not gel packs.

Lal, who is now investing heavily in original R&D, an investment separate from that in contract research, hopes to follow this development by developing novel screening tests for cervical cancer and hyper acidity causing bacteria, H pylori.

Following immense competition from Ranbaxy SRL, Nicholas Piramal and Reliance Life Sciences, Dr Lal PathLabs has also signed an MoU with a foreign firm for the outsourcing of tests to India and claims to be the first to successfully get American samples into India. The tests will not be clinical trials but high-end tests in oncology, histopathology and other molecular diagnostics.

Having successfully completed the dry run for the same, the company hopes to soon test the first commercial sample.

Expansion is also on the cards and Lal is hoping to touch 1,000 collection centres and 50 laboratories by 2010 and "this could be done through M&A activity, especially in West and South India," reveals Lal.