Advanced Biological Labs signs with UH Case Medical Center for HIV drug resistance tests

University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center in Cleveland has signed an agreement with Advanced Biological Laboratories (ABL), an information technology and diagnostic company based in Luxembourg, to join efforts on the designing and validation of an HIV drug resistance and tropism assay based on next-generation sequencing (NGS).

Under the agreement, UH will begin using ABL's DeepChek analysis software with DEEPGEN HIV, the HIV diagnostic test invented at University Hospitals' Translational Laboratory by Miguel Quinones-Mateu, PhD, Scientific Director at the UH lab. The new test will be offered as “DEEPGEN HIV, powered by DeepChek.”

The combined DEEPGEN HIV/ DeepChek test will aid monitoring the success of anti-HIV treatment by determining drug resistance and the ability of the virus to infect different cells based on deep genetic sequencing. It will also provide a sensitive platform for HIV physicians and researchers, both in academia and industry, to detect minority variants at frequencies unimaginable with standard HIV genotypic tests based on Sanger (population) sequencing.

“Although the clinical relevance of these minority members of the viral population is still under debate, it is reasonable to assume that the earlier these mutant viruses are detected, the sooner the proper strategy can be defined to control their growth,” says Dr. Quiñones-Mateu. “DEEPGEN HIV is now the primary HIV genotyping assay used by HIV physicians at the Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals AIDS Clinical Trials Unit, and it is being distributed nationally by a major clinical laboratory. This agreement with ABL will expedite the use of this innovative and highly sensitive assay worldwide, which will allow us to enhance the care and treatment of HIV-infected individuals around the globe.”