In what is believed to be an unprecedented partnership between academia and industry, an international group of collaborators met for the first time at Cornell, June 25-26, to launch an urgent program to develop an instant and cheap immune-system test that would help determine the appropriate treatment for people living with HIV/AIDS in the developing world.

What is unique about the collaboration, say the researchers, is that an independent management team, led by Hans-Georg Batz, core team director for the Division of Medicine at Imperial College, London, not only selected researchers for the collaboration but also enlisted companies that have come on board very early in the product development process.

"Normally, companies are very secretive about their product development programs until the launch. What's really remarkable is that we came to this meeting and opened our treasure chest of ideas and data and said let's do this together," said Peter Wagner, CEO of Zyomyx Inc. of Haywood, Calif.

Zyomyx is part of an $8.6 million international consortium, called the CD4 Initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project, which includes Antje J. Baeumner, Cornell associate professor of biological and environmental engineering, is called CD4 since the researchers seek to create a device -- very similar to a pregnancy test -- that examines the CD4 T-cell count in the blood, which drops significantly after HIV infection when AIDS develops.

The test, which will have to work in rural areas without electricity and water, endure extreme conditions and derive all its information from a finger prick, would enable health-care workers to instantly assess when to start life-saving, anti-retroviral therapy. It could help HIV/AIDS sufferers in poor countries get appropriate treatment sooner, which could significantly improve their chance for survival. Researchers hope to have the test available within three years.

Baeumner, who was awarded an initial CD4 Initiative grant of $386,000 (subject to annual renewal for four years) is working with liposomes -- small spheres filled with dye -- that can detect even small concentrations of CD4 cells and light up in different colors if so desired when in contact with them.

The collaboration also includes researchers from Beckman Coulter Inc., Miami, and the AIDS Pathogenesis Research Unit and the HIV Clinical Research Laboratory at the Burnet Institute in Melbourne, Australia.