Nanopore technology may cut test for tuberculosis from days to hours

Conventional tuberculosis screenings suffer from low sensitivity, specificity, and high-cost. The gold standard for the diagnosis of active tuberculosis still relies on time-consuming culture tests that take 10 to 40 days to complete.

Recent nanopore research by Assistant Professor Hung-Jen Wu of the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University, along with the Houston Methodist Research Institute, has led to a new screening tool that quickly identifies the M. tuberculosis antigen, CFP-10.

The process takes about nine hours, including incubation time.

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