NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Opko Health has received a $1 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the development of a tuberculosis test, the company announced today.
The grant will support development of a test for distinguishing latent TB from active TB using Opko's molecular diagnostics technology. The Miami-based firm also leverages the technology to create blood-based tests for identifying biomarkers for diseases including neurodegenerative disorders and malignancies.
Opko is a pharmaceutical and diagnostic firm. Its molecular diagnostics platform was developed in the laboratory of Thomas Kodadek at the Scripps Research Institute and is based on immunoglobulin autoantibodies as disease-specific biomarkers, the company said on its website.