IIT Delhi and NCL Pune to come up with a home-based COVID-19 testing kit; Read here

According to several news reports, The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, IIT Delhi will be developing a home-based COVID-19 testing kit. The reports added that IIT Delhi has tied up and signed an agreement with Wells Fargo and United Way of Bengaluru to develop the home-based COVID-19 testing kit. It will be a peptide-based ELISA test for the detection of COVID-19 antibodies.

ELISA stands for serological enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. It determines if a person has the antibodies for COVID-19 in blood or not. The results from this test can be beneficial in India's fight against Coronavirus. The test can help to identify individuals with antibodies who can donate their blood in an experimental treatment for the infected patients.

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IIT Delhi 2020's home-based COVID-19 testing kit

The Principal Investigator of the project, Dr Anurag S Rathore, Dean, Corporate Relations and Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, IIT Delhi recently gave a media statement about the home-based testing kit. He said the COVID-19 testing in India currently has a bottleneck.

The currently available options for testing have limited accessibility and affordability. He further added that this project, which is a collaboration between IIT Delhi and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune, holds the potential of making a big difference to this situation by enabling affordable, home-based testing.

The report added that Wells Fargo will be funding the project while UWBe will facilitate its implementation. The Dean also thanked the partners and mentioned that this collaboration highlights IIT Delhi’s strength in healthcare. Prof Rathore added that with this home-based COVID-19 testing kit they are aiming to offer an effective, quick, robust and affordable diagnostic solution for Coronavirus cases in India.

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IIT Delhi: Happy to be associated

Director of IIT Delhi, professor V Ramgopal Rao in his media statement said that they are happy to be associated with Wells Fargo and United Way of Bengaluru. He feels that this collaboration of IIT Delhi will have an immediate impact and will allow them to accelerate time-bound research to develop solutions on Coronavirus cases in India. He also mentioned that this current ELISA based test kit will be an added capability of India. Talking about IIT Delhi incubated startups, he said they have supplied over a million PPEs in India in last few weeks.