SugenTech Launches Domestic Sales of Rapid Tuberculosis Diagnostic Kit

[Asia Economy Reporter Jang Hyowon] With the domestic launch of SuzenTec's blood-based rapid tuberculosis diagnostic kit, the world's first to be successfully commercialized, precise tuberculosis diagnosis will be possible within 20 minutes.

On the 26th, SuzenTec announced that it has signed an exclusive domestic distribution agreement for the tuberculosis rapid diagnostic kit with Woongbi Meditech, a domestic diagnostic and medical device specialized distributor. Through this exclusive distribution agreement, rapid tuberculosis diagnosis is expected to become available at over 300 general hospital-level medical institutions nationwide and medical institutions under the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Since the tuberculosis rapid diagnostic kit was registered as a health insurance item in December last year, SuzenTec has been preparing for domestic sales. Among the companies considered for the distribution agreement, Woongbi Meditech was judged to be the optimal partner in terms of distribution network and expertise, leading to the signing of the exclusive domestic distribution agreement, according to the company.

A company official stated, “Tuberculosis is one of the three major infectious diseases prioritized by the World Health Organization (WHO), and the active tuberculosis diagnostic market alone is estimated to be worth 2 to 3 trillion KRW annually. One-third of the global population are latent tuberculosis patients, of whom 5 to 10% develop active tuberculosis showing symptoms. In South Korea, there are about 250,000 suspected cases annually, with approximately 25,000 confirmed patients and around 1,800 deaths per year.”

He continued, “Until now, tuberculosis diagnosis has mainly relied on extracting deep sputum derived from the patient's lungs, but this method requires specialized clinical pathologists, facilities, and equipment to perform the tests. SuzenTec's rapid diagnostic kit is based on biomarkers derived from tuberculosis bacteria and is the world's first to enable blood-based diagnosis, allowing rapid tuberculosis diagnosis within 20 minutes at medical sites,” he added.

Meanwhile, SuzenTec is accelerating the development of a rapid diagnostic kit that can diagnose COVID-19 infection through blood, similar to the tuberculosis rapid diagnostic kit. The company plans to develop a prototype within March to enable diagnosis of COVID-19 infection through blood within tens of minutes at medical sites. Currently, COVID-19 infection diagnosis is conducted similarly to tuberculosis, requiring extraction of sputum from suspected infected patients and nucleic acid amplification testing (RT-PCR), which necessitates specialized clinical pathologists, facilities, and equipment to perform the tests.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.