Today’s program will be presented in Chinese, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Everywhere in the world, we can observe and be touched by acts of kindness. People from all walks of life, faiths, and cultures extend themselves beyond the call of duty to help others unconditionally.

Through their noble deeds, humanity as a whole is elevated. To commend virtuous actions and encourage more people to be inspired by their examples, Supreme Master Ching Hai has lovingly created a series of awards, including the Shining World Leadership Award, Shining World Compassion Award, Shining World Hero and Heroine Awards, Shining World Honesty Award, Shining World Protection Award, Shining World Intelligence Award, and Shining World Inventor Award, to recognize some of the most exemplary, generous, caring, and courageous people who walk amongst us.

A long lasting cough, painful and sometimes producing blood, fever, weight loss, night sweats, and chest pain. These are all symptoms of tuberculosis, or TB, a bacterial disease which spreads by air. According to World Health Organization, one third of the world population, which equals at least two billion people, are carriers of tuberculosis bacilli.

One out of ten carriers may eventually develop and suffer from tuberculosis disease. If not treated properly, tuberculosis can be fatal. Indeed, approximately one to two million people lose their lives to this difficult-to-treat disease. Treatment usually involves long courses of multiple antibiotics.

Many people are infected with this kind of disease. Most TB cases are found in developing countries. In underdeveloped countries, the situation is even worse. In fact, more than 90% of tuberculosis patients live in very poor countries.

To prevent unnecessary suffering and death, it is important to diagnose tuberculosis at an early stage and give proper treatment to patients. Unfortunately, all current methods of diagnosing tuberculosis have some drawbacks; they are either time-consuming, expensive, or nonspecific, which are especially detrimental to the people in poorer countries.

This motivated Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih, Chair of the Department of Medical Biotechnology and Laboratory Science at the Chang Gung University in Formosa (Taiwan), to develop a more efficient and affordable TB test method. His invention is called the TB Test Strip.

Currently, the chest X-ray is widely used for TB testing in clinical practice. The chest X-ray is used to discern cavitation. When someone is suspected to have tuberculosis, the clinician will order a physical examination and the first thing to be examined will be the patient’s sputum. If the sputum contains tuberculosis bacteria, it will show up in a dyed sample. Its accuracy is only about 40%.

Another tranditional TB test method is sputum culture. If there are TB bacteria in the sputum sample, after being cultured, they will grow and become visible. After about 6 to 8 weeks, or two months, they will grow and show their morphology. Then it will take another two to three weeks to identify them. In the last five years, molecular diagnostics, or DNA diagnosis, has become very popular.

This technology has been practiced by several biotech companies abroad. It’s very accurate and takes a short time. But the problem is that the cost is very high! So, the test methods commonly used in hospitals, medical centers, or testing labs are either too inaccurate, inefficient or expensive. That’s what motivated us to improve the method.

Through years of research, Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih and his outstanding team developed a TB test method which cleverly combined two technologies: polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and a pregnancy test strip that can detect protein levels.

We adopted the features of these two techniques. The PCR technique is aimed at the nucleic acid or DNA, while the pregnancy test can detect the hormone-related protein. On the surface, there seems to be no obvious commonality between DNA and protein, but in our development, we used a primer as a marker of the protein during the amplifying process of the corresponding DNA. So when the DNA is amplified, we will have the corresponding protein. The amplified DNA will become a protein and can be detected the same way as the pregnancy testing.

Now, let us take a look at Dr. Lai’s TB Test Strip, and see how it works.

When we amplify DNA sequences, we normally use these testing solutions. These eppendorf tubes contain different kinds of testing solutions for amplifying DNA sequences. The amplification process will be done in this kind of plastic plate with 96 wells We extract the TB DNA from patients’ sputum and put them in the wells Then we will add testing solutions, which takes less than 10 minutes, and move them to an equipment to do PCR.

After an hour, we can extract a small portion of the amplified DNA and we drip it on an instrument like this. Then after about five minutes, we will see one line or two lines appear. Two lines indicate TB positive and one line means TB negative. We can make the call in less than five minutes. It’s very affordable. This is made of plastic. Let’s open it. It’s similar to the pregnancy test strip that’s been used for many years.

They are almost identical, except for a few modifications. We added some nano-gold particles inside. This testing solution is highly sensitive, professional, and accurate. It’s 98-99% accurate. In comparison to other countries’ expensive equipment utilizing fluorescence in testings, our method gives a more accurate result. We can read the result with our bare eyes. So it’s affordable, accurate, and easy to use. These are the features that we are very proud of!

Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television. When we return, we will learn more about the TB Test Strip with Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih, and share his glory as a recipient of the Shining World Inventor Award from Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Welcome back to today’s program featuring the Shining World Inventor laureate, Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih. He invented the TB Test Strip, a new TB test method that is quick, accurate, and affordable, thus a key to saving many lives from tuberculosis.

In recognition of Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih’s beneficial invention, Supreme Master Ching Hai honored him with the Shining World Inventor Award. In an award presentation ceremony attended by leading medical experts, Dr. Lai’s colleagues in the lab, and distinguished guests from various fields, Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih was presented the Shining World Inventor Award, along with a letter of appreciation from Supreme Master Ching Hai.

“Tuberculosis is, these days, primarily an illness of the poor. Now your great mind has discovered an inexpensive, quick diagnostic tool by testing unique nucleic acids in the various strains of mycobacterium responsible for this illness - giving results in less than 5 minutes. This is a great boon to the poor, and will help uplift the general health of countless people and provide the opportunity for them to avail themselves of treatment while still in the early stages of this disease.

This being so, you will have saved such people a great deal of suffering. …For compassionately striving to ease the physical burden of humanity, for assisting the poor to greater health, for creating an inexpensive and reliable medical test for a serious illness, and for the dedication you show in your noble research, we hereby applaud and celebrate the inventive deeds of Professor Lai Hsin-Chih and the Department of Medical Biotechnology and Laboratory Science. With Great Honour, Love and Blessings, Supreme Master Ching Hai”

Dr. Lai was also presented with gifts, including the book, “Celestial Art,” a compilation of Supreme Master Ching Hai’s diverse art creations with excerpts from her spiritual discourses. Gifts were also distributed to Dr. Lai’s team members as well.

Thank you!

Thank you!

Upon receiving the honor, Dr. Lai expressed his thankfulness to Supreme Master Ching Hai.

I am very grateful for the Supreme Master for giving us such a big encouragement for such a small achievement. I can see that my colleagues in the lab are very excited! We will continue to work hard in our research and continue to contribute our efforts. Thank you!

Dr. Lai went on to humbly attribute the invention’s success to his associates.

Conducting research takes teamwork. I’m only receiving the award on behalf of all the team members who have been working hard in the past five or six years. It was a team effort of many years. The colleagues who worked with me during the early years, such as Dr. Soo Po-chi, Dr. Horng Yu-tze, as well as my student Huang Chien-Chung, etc., are now working in different places. We continued with the work.

Our laboratory colleagues are continuing to work in the field of tuberculosis research. In addition to the small achievement we have now, we hope to further our research and solve some difficult problems in diagnosing tuberculosis. I would like to thank the laboratory colleagues who have devoted a long time in the lab quietly to contribute their wisdom and strength to bring such a result! Thank you!

The TB Test Strip may look simple, but its invention required much in the way of manpower, effort, and sleepless nights. In addition, translating such an innovation from the lab to the market can be another challenge. Fortunately, Dr. Lai found the support they needed.

At first, we had a hard time to find a company who could spray nano-gold on the strips, but later we were lucky to find Formosa Biomedical Technology Corporation. After testing for about three months, they liked the result. So they decided to go ahead and mass produce it. But we still need to go through procedures like inspection and registration, etc. It may take about a year to go through all the procedures.

Meanwhile, Dr. Lai and his team members are already pursuing new projects, in the hope to eradicate the contagious disease of tuberculosis.

About 5% of the people who carry TB bacteria don’t show any symptoms. And we can’t find TB bacteria in the sputum of these latent patients. However, we have found more and more cases who have TB bacteria in places where TB bacteria should not be found, such as their bones, muscles, cerebrospinal fluid, and pleural and peritoneal fluid.

So right now, our lab is actively developing methods for diagnosing latent TB and extrapulmonary TB. We are also studying other lung diseases, such as lung inflammation. We are also interested in studying cancer cells, because they are closely related to inflammation. We want to find better dignosis methods and even a cure for it.

Bravo, Dr. Lai Hsin-Chih, for your ingenious and promising invention, which will be saving many lives and preventing suffering in the near future. May Heaven bless you and your team with continued success, health, and happiness.

Smart viewers, thank you for your presence on today’s program. Please keep your dial tuned to Supreme Master Television for Words of Wisdom, up next after Noteworthy News. May your days be filled with inner peace and God’s love.

Come visit the Museum of Palestinian Folk Heritage, founded in 1977 by the In’ash Al-Usra Society, showcasing items of Palestinian traditional daily life. There was no breaking into people houses, there was an abundance of politeness, good manners, and love.

Find out more about Palestinian traditional culture starting Friday, August 20, on Supreme Master Television’s Enlightening Entertainment.