Genei Labs to commercialize IIT-Delhi’s low cost COVID-19 diagnostic kit

New Delhi: Genei Laboratories, a Bengaluru based biotech company, has received a license from IIT Delhi to manufacture and commercialize their low-cost, accurate, real-time PCR diagnostic assay kit for COVID-19. The company is a part of the National Biomedical Resources Indigenization Consortium (NBRIC) hosted at C-CAMP Bengaluru to drive indigenous innovation.

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi was in the news recently as one of the first academic institutes in India to get the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) approval for this indigenously developed kit.

By the agreement, Genei Labs holds a non-exclusive license from IIT Delhi to scale up production and go to market with this kit. While standard RT-PCR kits in the market are probe-based, this design does away with probes completely. Instead, it detects COVID-19 specific RNA sequence in samples. As a result, the cost of testing is reduced to a fraction, making the kit affordable and accessible in this time of dire need.

Genei will manufacture the kits in an exclusive COVID-19 testing kit manufacturing facility at the Andhra Pradesh MedTech Zone (AMTZ) in Vishakhapatnam. The kit is expected to be rolled out in the market in early June.

“We are thankful to IIT Delhi and AMTZ for considering Genei Labs for further development and large scale manufacture of this unique detection assay for COVID-19. Using Genei labs expertise in reagent manufacturing and kit-making, we will ensure an accurate, affordable, Make-in-India RT-PCR kit for the diagnosis of Covid-19″ Genei Laboratories Managing Director S Chandrashekaran said.

C-CAMP CEO and Director, Dr. Taslimarif Saiyed, also Convener of the NBRIC Governing Council, said “This tie-up between Genei and IIT Delhi heralds a new mode of mission-driven PPP collaboration between the phenomenal Indian research and innovation communities in India. The low-cost kit will be a huge boost to our testing capabilities and more testing will mean more case identification and better pandemic management. NBRIC looks forward to fostering more such tie-ups to strengthen India’s indigenous innovations in diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics.”

Constituted by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India and hosted, led by C-CAMP, NBRIC is a collaborative Public-Private Partnership to drive indigenous innovation focused on developing reagents, diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for COVID19 and beyond.