NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Population Genetics Technologies today announced an agreement with Case Western Reserve University to further develop next-generation sequencing-based diagnostic tests to determine HIV drug resistance.
The tests will be used to help manage HIV patients and will leverage PGT's technology called VeriTag for increasing the sensitivity of next-generation sequencing. VeriTag enhances the power of NGS to detect drug-resistance mutations occurring in .1 percent of viruses. By comparison, standard sequencing tests for HIV drug resistance can detect a mutation at no lower than 20 percent of viruses, while NGS alone can detect resistance mutations at the 1 percent to 5 percent level, PGT said.
PGT will work with Miguel Quiñones-Mateu on the project. Quiñones-Mateu is an assistant professor of pathology at CWRU and scientific director of the University Hospitals Translational Laboratory. Using NGS technology, his work focuses on understanding the mechanisms and clinical consequences of drug resistance.
PGT said that the VeriTag-based tests are expected to be US Food and Drug Administration-approved and CE-marked with full cloud-based data analysis, data management, and clinical reporting. They will target the HIV and hepatitis C virus drug-resistance monitoring markets, while subsequent tests will focus on antimicrobial resistance in healthcare-associated infections to help guide therapeutic use.