一項I期雙盲對照的臨床試驗涉及40例艾滋病病毒（HIV）陽性患者，目的是評估診斷艾滋病病毒的診斷系統。

在該項研究中，每例患者都將接受標準的病毒表型檢測，該檢測逐漸成為幫助醫生確定哪種藥物對HIV感染患者的優勢病毒株不再有效的常規工具。這40例患者還將接受另一種抗病毒功效檢測，該檢測使用加拿大SpectraDigital公司（SDC，Guelp，Canada）推出的HIV SpectraPoint檢測法進行。使用這種快速檢測方法，醫生在24小時內就可以得到結果。這樣醫生可以在病毒變異成新的耐藥株之前，及時作出必要的治療選擇。

患者將會從這種快速檢測得到的資料中獲得實實在在的臨床效益，這種新型檢測手段將會替代傳統的耗時數周的檢測方法。與此同時，艾滋病醫生也對他們患者的病情有了更加精確及時的了解。

SpectraDigital公司總裁Satish Deshpande說：“這項小規模研究在我們HIV診斷學的研究進展中是極其重要的一步。除了我們的初步研究目標：即比較HIV SpectraPoint檢測法與標準病毒表型抵抗型檢測法之外，我們還將評估新型檢測方法在那些病毒負荷低于傳統檢測方法下限的患者中，檢測耐藥病毒株的能力。”

SDC研發了以細胞為基礎的技術用來解決在藥物研發、環境監測以及醫學診斷等領域所遇到的各種難題。

New Diagnostic System for HIV

A phase I, double-blind controlled trial of a new diagnostic system for HIV involves 40 HIV-positive patients.
In the trial, each patient will receive a standard phenotype test, an increasingly common tool that can help doctors determine which drugs are no longer effective against the predominant strain in an HIV-infected patient. The same 40 subjects will also receive another antiviral efficacy test generated by the HIV SpectraPoint assay of SpectraDigital Corp. (SDC, Guelp, Canada). Doctors should have the results of this rapid test within 24 hours. This, in turn, allows essential treatment decisions to be made before the virus can develop new, unseen resistance patterns.
The hope is that patients will receive real clinical benefit from rapidly available data supplanting the traditional time window of weeks, and that HIV doctors will at the same time have a more accurate “snapshot” of their patient’s disease.
“This pilot study represents an important step in the development of our HIV diagnostics solutions,” said Satish Deshpande, president of SpectraDigital. “In addition to our primary objective of comparing HIV SpectraPoint to a standard phenotypic resistance assay, we also will determine the ability of our system to detect resistance among individuals with viral loads well below the limit of detection of traditional assays.”
SDC develops cell-based technologies to resolve various problems in drug development, environmental monitoring, and medical diagnostics.