COVID-19 Test Kit from IIT Delhi gets ICMR Approval

A test kit developed by Kusuma School of Biological Sciences under the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi became the first real time test kit from an academy to get approval from ICMR.

About the Kit

The test developed by IIT Delhi is a swab testing kit. It is based on RT-PCR (real time polymerase chain reaction) process. It is to be cheaper than other test kits and can be mass produced easily. The kit became the first of its category from an academic institution to get ICMR approval.

Probe

A unique feature of the test kit which makes it affordable is that it does not make use of probes. Probes are small, single stranded fragments of DNA that are used to detect the presence of the pathogen’s specific genetic material. The probe’s DNA fragment is complimentary to the pathogen’s gene of interest and hence binds with it. This binding triggers a tag- such as fluorescent tag.

PRACRITI

The researchers from IIT Delhi have also introduced a dashboard called PRACRITI or PRediction, and Assessment of CoRona Infections and Transmission in India. It is a mobile friendly and web based application for predicting the spread of the SARS CoV 2.