Tianqi develops "sandwich cup method" to solve the problem of tuberculosis diagnosis

After years of independent research, Hunan Tianqi Medical New Technology Co., Ltd. has successfully developed the world's advanced "sandwich cup liquid-based acid-fast bacilli test technology" and related equipment and reagents, and passed the results appraisal organized by the Hunan Provincial Department of Science and Technology. Experts unanimously believe that this technology has pushed smear microscopy technology to automation for the first time, and the positive detection rate of tuberculosis bacteria has increased from 25% of traditional methods to more than 60%, reaching the world's advanced level. Recently, this achievement was highly praised by industry experts at the "Eleventh Five-Year Plan" National Major Science and Technology Achievements Exhibition.

For a long time, the diagnosis method for tuberculosis has mainly been the tuberculosis pathogen test recommended by the World Health Organization, that is, the traditional sputum smear and culture. However, the diagnosis rate of this method is only about 25%, which is very easy to cause missed diagnosis, and the diagnosis time is long, which is easy to delay the disease.

In order to develop a new method for rapid, accurate and inexpensive diagnosis of tuberculosis, Tianqi Company organized a scientific research team composed mainly of returned doctors. After years of design, research and trial, they successfully developed a "sandwich cup liquid-based acid-fast bacillus test technology" with a high diagnosis rate. This technology uses a special digestion and inactivation liquid to digest tissue cells and mucin, etc., to expose the tuberculosis bacillus, and the sandwich cup with a basement membrane centrifuges to collect bacteria and adsorb the tuberculosis bacillus, thereby greatly improving the positive detection rate of tuberculosis bacillus and shortening the detection time. At the same time, the price of this technology is extremely low and can be popularized to township-level health institutions, truly achieving early diagnosis, early detection and early treatment.

Peng Jun, chairman of Tianqi, said that after the completion of the projects they independently undertook, such as "sandwich cup tuberculosis detection technology" and "self-gel cell bacterial culture technology", they can develop a variety of testing and diagnostic equipment with different functions and more than 15 diagnostic reagents. Among them, the fully automatic tuberculosis intelligent detection system successfully developed by the research team involves cross-disciplinary subjects such as medicine, communication networks, robotics, image recognition and seamless splicing. It can complete the automatic analysis and processing of 300 field of view images within 3-4 minutes, and the misjudgment rate is less than one in ten thousand.