The World Health Organization has identified more than three-dozen instances of resistance to Tamiflu in the H1N1 swine flu virus.

TGen also is working with a Bay Area pharmaceutical firm, Adamas Pharmaceuticals, which is developing a unique triple-drug combination to treat influenza and to impede resistance.

"TGen's diagnostic test has been a useful tool in our research and is an important contribution to the influenza field," said Gregory T. Went, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Adamas Pharmaceuticals, headquartered in Emeryville, Calif.

At most doctors' offices, there is no readily available test for H1N1 flu. Those tests are generally being done by state and federal health agencies, and usually for those patients who require hospitalization and appear at high risk because they have a suppressed immune system or they have a chronic disease.

"The novelty in our study is the use of increasingly common laboratory tools to rapidly and accurately detect resistance to anti-influenza drugs. Until now, nearly all this work has required highly sophisticated laboratory procedures not readily available to most clinical labs and has really only been used for broad public health surveillance,'' Engelthaler said. "Our testing procedure measures very minute amounts of virus and minute changes to the virus. Not only does it detect when resistance is occurring, but it also detects it at the earliest onset possible."

Source: The Translational Genomics Research Institute