Application of monoclonal anti-mycolate antibodies in serological diagnosis of tuberculosis

Truyts, Alma, Du Preez, Ilse, Maesela, Eldas M., Scriba, Manfred R., Baillie, Les ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8186-223X, Jones, Arwyn T. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2781-8905, Land, Kevin J., Verschoor, Jan A. and Lemmer, Yolandy 2024. Application of monoclonal anti-mycolate antibodies in serological diagnosis of tuberculosis. Tropical Medicine and Infectious Disease 9 (11) , p. 269. 10.3390/tropicalmed9110269

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Abstract

Patient loss to follow-up caused by centralised and expensive diagnostics that are reliant on sputum is a major obstacle in the fight to end tuberculosis. An affordable, non-sputum biomarker-based, point-of-care deployable test is needed to address this. Serum antibodies binding the mycobacterial cell wall lipids, mycolic acids, have shown promise as biomarkers for active tuberculosis. However, anti-lipid antibodies are of low affinity, making them difficult to detect in a lateral flow immunoassay—a technology widely deployed at the point-of-care. Previously, recombinant monoclonal anti-mycolate antibodies were developed and applied to characterise the antigenicity of mycolic acid. We now demonstrate that these anti-mycolate antibodies specifically detect hexane extracts of mycobacteria. Secondary antibody-mediated detection was applied to detect the displacement of the monoclonal mycolate antibodies by the anti-mycolic acid antibodies present in tuberculosis-positive guinea pig and human serum samples. These data establish proof-of-concept for a novel lateral flow immunoassay for tuberculosis provisionally named MALIA—mycolate antibody lateral flow immunoassay.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Pharmacy
Additional Information:	License information from Publisher: LICENSE 1: URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, Start Date: 2024-11-06
Publisher:	MDPI AG
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	15 November 2024
Date of Acceptance:	4 November 2024
Last Modified:	13 Aug 2025 15:07
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/174025

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