IIT Delhi to develop affordable, home-based COVID-19 testing kit

IIT Delhi has tied up with the Wells Fargo and United Way of Bengaluru to create a testing kit that will be economical and home-based.

The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) has announced that it has signed an agreement with Wells Fargo and United Way of Bengaluru to develop a “peptide-based” ELISA test for the detection of COVID-19 antibodies.ELISA, short for serological enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, helps in determining if the person possesses antibodies for coronavirus in the blood or not. The test result may help in fighting coronavirus as it can identify individuals with antibodies who can donate their blood for the experimental treatment of infected patients.

The Principal Investigator of the project, Dr Anurag S Rathore, Dean, Corporate Relations and Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, IIT Delhi in a statement said: “Testing for COVID-19 continues to be a bottleneck at present. Options that are available in the market offer limited accessibility and affordability. This project- a collaboration between IIT Delhi and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune - has the potential of making a meaningful difference to this situation by enabling economical, home-based testing.”

Wells Fargo will be funding the project while UWBe will be facilitating its implementation.

“We are thankful to Wells Fargo, our Corporate CSR Partner, and United Way of Bengaluru, our CSR NGO Partner for their support. This collaboration highlights IIT Delhi's strength in healthcare. This research aims at developing a peptide-based, ELISA-based diagnostic, serological assay against COVID-19. We also aim to create an economical, commercial process for manufacturing the antigens used in ELISA and home-based diagnostic kits to offer an effective, quick, robust and affordable diagnostic solution for the COVID-19 outbreak,” Prof Rathore added.

This research will utilise the microplate-based enzyme immune-assay technique. The choice of antigen will be a peptide that has been identified computationally. Structural analysis of the available complex is performed to design a novel peptide that has a complementary property with spike protein of COVID-19. A set of peptides will be designed using a combination approach to test their binding. From the sequences of the variable regions of the Heavy and Light chain including the novel designed peptide, cloning of the mAb fragment (CV-Fab) will be performed. CV-Fab will be produced from which ELISA based testing kits will be created.

Professor V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi, said: “We are happy to be associated with Wells Fargo and United Way of Bengaluru. This collaboration will have immediate impact, allowing us to accelerate time-critical research to develop solutions. This funding for the project on COVID-19 detection research shall help the nation combat these difficult times.This current ELISA based test kit will further add to the capabilities of the nation. IIT Delhi incubated start-ups have also supplied over a million PPEs to the nation in just the last few weeks.”

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