Hong Kong firm races to develop chikungunya fever test for early detection

Hong Kong researchers are developing a rapid test for chikungunya fever that they hope will detect the mosquito-borne disease at an earlier stage, as part of the city’s efforts to harness technology to combat the public health risk.

Ricky Chiu Yin-to, founder and CEO of biotechnology company Phase Scientific, said on Monday that his team was working to develop a rapid blood test that could yield results in 10 to 15 minutes.

The product, which uses blood from a finger prick, aims to detect specific proteins, or antigens, on the surface of the chikungunya virus rather than looking for antibodies produced by the body – an approach adopted by many other rapid tests in the world.

“When you are at the stage of acute infection, the test could identify chikungunya virus from your blood, instead of looking into a more secondary immune response of your body,” Chiu said.

Existing rapid test kits for chikungunya fever available in the market, produced by companies from the United States, mainland China and elsewhere, look for virus antibodies that are produced at a later stage of infection.

But Chiu said there could be shortcomings with test kits looking for antibodies.