November 12-16 2024, the 2024 Union Conference on Lung Health, the most important tuberculosis academic annual gathering was staged in Bali, Indonesia. As an official sponsor to this year’s Union Conference, the Innovation Alliance brought to the venue the first ever joint exhibition of Chinese TB invitro diagnostic solutions and products, during which six Chinese IVD manufacturers’ 12 TB IVDs products including an AI powered computer aided detection software along with an ultraportable radiology device were put on full display.  

Conceived early in 2024, the call to put on a joint exhibition on the Union Conference was enthusiastically answered by six Chinese IVD manufacturers, they are Beijing Wantai Biopharm, Beijing Coyote Biotech, Hangzhou Ustar Biotech, Guangzhou Leide Biotech, Xiamen Zeesan Biotech and Jiangxi Zhongke JFHealth Tech. All believed that the timing for an all-out exhibition of Chinese developed and made TB IVD products and solutions on the biggest global TB stage was ripe.  

Under the main theme of ‘China Innovations Contribute to the END-TB Targets’, the 54 m² booth on the first floor of the Bali International Convention Center became an instant focal point of this year’s Union Conference. During the five-day academic event, the booth was teeming with visitors from four corners of the globe. In the afternoon of 13^th, the soon to be Union Chairwoman, Dr. Cassandra Kelly D Cirino paid a visit to the booth, where she praised the joint exhibition as a landmark event signaling a new era of tuberculosis prevention and control with a growing Chinese presence in it. In the morning of 14^th, Dr. Dennis Falzon, head of the digital health and research of the global tuberculosis program at the WHO visited the booth, and carefully went through each and every exhibit put on display with in-depth conversations with all the manufacturers on site. Dr Falzon believed that this joint exhibition clearly demonstrated the potential China can make on the END-TB roadmap on a global level. These technologies will fundamentally alter the global TB IVDs market landscape if these products can be further validated and received WHO Prequalification.

As a side event to the joint exhibition, in the night of 13th, IATB hosted a primetime satellite session under the same theme ‘China Innovations Contribute to the END TB targets,’ in which all six manufacturers along with IATB presented their technologies and works in detail. The conference room on the ground floor was packed with audience throughout the one and half hour event, and it clearly had the attention of the whole Union Conference. Not only the big international organizations were present, like the WHO GTP’s Dr. Dennis Falzon, FIND’s TB research lead Dr. Adam Penn Nicholson, the Johns Hopkins University’s Prof. Carrie Tudor as well as other representatives from the Stop TB partnership, the Clinton Health Initiative, but many other TB professionals from the global south whom have shown great interest in the technologies and products being presented with many questions raised on their evidence base, their regulatory status as well as their per-test costs.

In the morning of 14th, Prof. Yuhong Liu, vice chair of IATB and Prof. Yu Pang, director of immunology and bacteriology lab at the Beijing Chest Hospital received a live interview by the UNION Live program, in which they spoke about the founding mission of the IATB, its research networks and works done so far as well as the IVD research landscape of China right now.

The five-day joint exhibition and the satellite session marked the first ever attempt by China’s TB R&D and industrial community to showcase its strength and potential to make a lasting impact on the END-TB roadmap. Next step, IATB will lead the research efforts through its China Tuberculosis Clinical Trials Consortium (CTCTC) network to solidify the evidence base of Chinese developed TB technologies and foster the translation of these technologies to make a real impact in the resource constraint high TB burden countries.