Roche aims to launch Sars test by end July

Swiss healthcare group Roche Holding AG said yesterday it aims to launch a reliable diagnostic test for the Sars virus by the end of July, in a move that could help curb the spread of the killer disease.

"We are developing now a Sars-specific test. We believe this will be developed by the middle of June and will be on the market by the end of July," Alexander Klauser, spokesman for the world's biggest diagnostics company, told Reuters.

The World Health Organisation hailed the news as a welcome step forward in what has turned out to be a search more difficult than first imagined for reliable, large-scale tests that can quickly detect Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.

"They are absolutely essential in controlling these outbreaks," WHO spokesman Dick Thompson said.

"They are a way of identifying quickly who is infected and needs to be isolated from perhaps thousands of people who are not infected but who are in isolation or quarantine," he said.

Tests can also give health authorities insight into when patients are most infectious and the best time to administer drugs, he said.

Sars has killed at least 327 people and infected more than 5,000 since it broke out in China's Guangdong province late last year and then spread to dozens of countries.

Scientists, including researchers in Hong Kong, the United States and German biotechnology firm Artus GmbH, are working on developing tests for the virus that has hit air travel and other economic activity in southeast Asia, with spill-over effects also felt in western economies.

Roche said it was too soon to give any guidance about the market potential for the test. It is also examining whether it could develop a drug to treat the flu-like illness, but needed more information about the virus, Klauser said.

Investors welcomed the news and Roche shares rose two per cent to 86.35 Swiss francs, outperforming the Swiss market, before edging back to 85.95, up 1.4 per cent, by 1145 GMT.

Klauser said the diagnostic test would be based on Roche's polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, the industry standard. PCR acts as a kind of genetic copying machine that lets scientists detect even minute samples of genetic material.

Roche has been collecting Sars samples from hundreds of infected people across Asia in a bid to rush out a test kit for the killer disease.

It said earlier this month it was gathering stool and sputum samples from state-run hospitals in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Thompson said tests for Sars already exist, but they are mostly made by hand, so only a few hundred can be conducted in a day. To perform tests on a large scale, tests developed by the private sector were needed, he added.

"What is important is that these are easily done, they can be done without expensive equipment, and that they be cheap," he added.

He also noted that PCR tests can generally be used shortly after infection, unlike some antibody tests that may not work until 20 days down the line.