Breakthrough against killer TB

2007-10-11 17:10

Johannesburg - South African scientists announced a major breakthrough on Thursday in the fight against a deadly strain of drug-resistant tuberculosis, sequencing the genome in a week.

Using technology worth R5m brought in from the United States, a group of scientists working for a government-sponsored research centre decoded and sequenced the strain, which would have ordinarily taken a year.

The research breakthrough has the potential eventually to lead to a cure, scientists hope.

"We have taken a sample of (XDR) TB from a Kwazulu-Natal patient and sequenced the entire genome of the strain of TB," said Carl Montague, the health portfolio manager of Lifelab which funds the National Genomics Platform.

"(It) took us just over a week, using other technology it would have taken up to a year," he told AFP.

While a breakthrough for a cure is still a long way off, scientists hope their achievement will lead to a better understanding of the virus and better diagnostic tools.

"We are a significant way from finding a treatment. We do hope to have better diagnostic tools within a year or two.

"This is the very first step towards a better drug," James Sakwa, the manager of the national genomics platform, told AFP by phone from the eastern city of Durban.

- AFP