Bengaluru-based Biotechnology firm to produce IIT Delhi's coronavirus testing kit

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi low-cost coronavirus testing kit will be produced by a Bengaluru-based biotechnology firm and is expected to be made available from the first week of June.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi low-cost coronavirus testing kit will be produced by a Bengaluru-based biotechnology firm and is expected to be made available from the first week of June.

The large-scale assembly and manufacturing of the kits by Genei Laboratories will be carried out at a facility exclusively set up for Covid-19 testing kits at the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) in Visakhapatnam.

While talking about the production, the IIT Delhi Director V Ramgopal Rao said that "Genei Laboratories is one of the companies which has received the non-exclusive license from IIT Delhi for the Probe free RT-PCR based Covid-19 low-cost test kit."

IIT- Delhi is planning to give non-exclusive open license to companies for commercialising the test, but with a price rider.

The institute has kept Rs 500 as the price for the test kit, however, the laboratories have not yet announced their price. 

"The firm is delighted to enter into a partnership with IIT Delhi for further development and commercialization of this unique detection assay for COVID-19," Genei Laboratories Managing Director S Chandrashekaran said.

"Using their unique technology and our expertise in reagent and kit-making, the firm ensures an accurate, affordable, Make-in-India kit for the diagnosis of Sars-CoV2," Chandrashekaran said.

Further, Genei Laboratories expects to manufacture the most affordable real-time PCR testing Kits for COVID19 in India," he said.

The final kit will have two variants and is expected to be rolled out of AMTZ campus by June 1st week of 2020.

Using comparative sequence analyses, the IIT Delhi team identified unique regions (short stretches of RNA sequences) in the COVID-19 and SARS COV-2 genome.