IIT Delhi coronavirus testing kit gets nod from ICMR

A testing kit for coronavirus developed by team of researchers at IIT Delhi Kusuma School of Biological Sciences has got approval from ICMR, the nodal body for COVID-19 testing.

A team of researchers at IIT Delhi Kusuma School of Biological Sciences (KSBS) has developed a testing kit for coronavirus which has been approved by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the nodal body for COVID-19 testing. 

The assay (testing kit) has been validated at ICMR with a sensitivity and specificity of 100%, IIT Delhi said in a statement. 

With this Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi becomes the first academic institute in the country to obtain ICMR approval for a real-time PCR-based diagnostic assay. 

The IIT Delhi team which has developed the diagnostic assay consists of Prashant Pradhan (Ph.D. Scholar), Ashutosh Pandey (Ph.D. Scholar), Praveen Tripathi (PhD Scholar), Dr. Akhilesh Mishra, Dr. Parul Gupta, Dr. Sonam Dhamija, Professor Vivekanandan Perumal, Professor Manoj B. Menon, Professor Bishwajit Kundu, and Professor James Gomes.

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

This method uses primers targeting unique regions of COVID-19 that were designed and tested using real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR). These primers specifically bind to regions conserved in over 400 fully sequenced novel coronavirus genomes. This highly sensitive assay was developed by extensive optimization using synthetic DNA constructs followed by in vitro generated RNA fragments. 

"This is the first probe-free assay for COVID-19 approved by ICMR and it will be useful for specific and affordable high throughput testing. This assay can be easily scaled up as it does not require fluorescent probes. The team is targeting large scale deployment of the kit at affordable prices with suitable industrial partners as soon as possible," the release said. 

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