Though not naming names at this point, Guardian Technologies (Herndon, Virginia) reported last week that it is in contract negotiations for a partnership with a "respected and internationally recognized research institute" to develop a "next-generation" method of detecting and diagnosing tuberculosis (TB) and malaria.

Guardian said that the institute's scientists are expected to work to perfect the use of Guardian's Signature Mapping imaging technology to automatically detect, identify and quantify the bacteria that causes TB and the parasites that cause malaria.

"The major value of Guardian's Signature Mapping technology for the detection of both TB and malaria," said Richard Borrelli, VP of business development for Guardian, "is the elimination of a time-consuming, labor-intensive and tedious process, which requires highly trained laboratory technologists to scan sputum samples to accurately detect, identify, [and] diagnose the disease and measure disease loads on healthy samples under microscopic technique on cultured slides."

Borrelli said that by automating such processes, the company's technology is expected to reduce labor costs and provide faster diagnoses, thus leading to faster delivery of therapy and care, Borrelli told Medical Device Daily.

It also expects its technology to help eliminate laboratory errors and "improve detection rates and accurate diagnosis."

"Put simply, improved diagnostics translate into earlier administration of treatments and ultimately lives saved," Borrelli said.

The company's technology has been integrated with "numerous" existing medical diagnostic systems, including MRI, X-ray and other imaging modalities.

"Enhanced with Signature Mapping, these systems can detect disease conditions with very significantly increased levels of sensitivity and accuracy," the company said.

Borelli told MDD that the unnamed institute will be looking at the problem of TB and malaria detection from a "holistic point of view ... not [only] a radiographic problem but a lab problem, as well."

"We would be looking to incorporate our technology into existing instruments," Borrelli added.

The company also is seeking a laboratory partner. The institute is expected to provide contacts to laboratories, in addition to pursuing its role of taking Guardian's "core technologies ... and customizing our applications," Borrelli said.

He said that the alliance, assuming all goes well, will provide access to actual clinical cases of these diseases and will help the company "move more quickly ... than we could by ourselves."

"We hope to be announcing something shortly with more detail," he said, noting that some of its plans depend on financing.

Signature Mapping has been called an "industry-first" computer-aided detection (CAD) technology with applications not only in healthcare but also in the areas of public security, such as bomb detection.

MDD interviewed Borrelli last November at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA; Oak Brook, Illinois) conference in Chicago (MDD, Dec. 4, 2006), when the company was taking its core digital imaging detection technology, 3i (Intelligent Imaging Informatics) to evaluate under the auspices of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

Borrelli explained at that time that the company's technology uses mathematic equations and algorithms "to really extract information that's unseen to the naked eye in these pixels of information."

Five pilot studies in healthcare also have been conducted through an agreement with the Image Processing and Informatics Laboratory of the University of Southern California (USC; Los Angeles).

For the current initiative, the focus will be in targeting diagnostics for TB and malaria, thus strictly healthcare.

"These new clinical applications go far beyond the radiographic applications disclosed to date and demonstrate the broad latitude of medical applications which will benefit from Guardian's Signature Mapping technology."

Recent statistics indicate that about 8.8 million people annually develop TB, and that about 2 million die of the disease each year. Epidemiologists currently estimate that one-third of the world's population is infected with the TB bacillus.

"In the case of the world TB and malaria epidemics, faster, less expensive and more accurate diagnoses also result in improved control of the worldwide spread of these diseases," Borrelli said.

The company describes malaria as a "major threat" to 40% of the world's population, for the most part affecting those in the poorest countries.

WHO estimates that 1.5 million people die each year from the disease, although the fatalities could be as high as 3 million a year. More than 500 million people become severely ill with malaria every year, with 90% of those cases occurring in Africa. On that continent, one out of every five children reportedly die from the disease.

Separate from the current endeavor being planned with the research institute, last November, Borrelli also told MDD that the company hopes to use its technology for cancer detection, as well, and at a point in the disease state earlier than physicians now are able to diagnose the disease.