Will help upgrade conventional RTqPCR kit manufacturing, testing lines to meet RTPCR2.0 targets on kit transportation, storage at room temperature, lower cost per test
IIT Alumni Council announced that it will partner ICT Mumbai in the MegaLab initiative. ICT Mumbai becomes the second institutional partner in the MegaLab initiative after Mumbai University – and will help upgrade the conventional RTqPCR kit manufacturing and testing lines to meet RTPCR2.0 targets on kit transportation and storage at room temperature, lower cost per test (through lower consumption of kit material) and per sample (through higher pooling ratio) and ability to manufacture the test kits and test kit constituents in large continuous process plants.
“IIT Alumni Council is very happy to welcome ICT Mumbai as its institutional partner for the MegaLab and RTPCR 2.0 initiative. MegaLab Mumbai will serve as the first key component of the national infrastructure for testing of infectious diseases. The process development and technology strengths of ICT Mumbai, their alumni, students and faculty will accelerate our path to self-sufficiency and global supremacy in this field . We are very pleased to partner with eminent institutions in pursuance of our nation building agenda” said Ravi Sharma, President, IIT Alumni Council .
“The students and alumni of ICT Mumbai and have always taken pride in research orientation of the institute. MegaLab Mumbai and RTqPCR 2.0 are excellent initiatives by IIT Alumni Council in the fight against COVID-19. It will meet the immediate need for mass testing though reliable, faster and cheaper genetic diagnostics – in addition to becoming a showpiece for indigenous technology and engineering capability,” said Prof Anirudha Pandit, an alumnus of IIT, Member, Board of Governors, IIT Bombay and Vice Chancellor, ICT Mumbai.
IIT Alumni Council, along with partner organisations has helped rapidly deploy innovative appropriate technologies to help meet the health crisis perpetuated by the COVID-19 pandemic. These include AI based digital X-ray systems, contactless COVID-19 isolation centre configurations, IoT systems for virtual hospitals, pool testing algorithms for RTPCR, COVID-19 test bus, open indigenous technology stacks for testing like Kodoy and ultracompact indigenous ultrasound scanners with portable gene sequencing so that the entire functionality of the COVID bus launched on Maharashtra Day can now be fitted in a cab. Several companies are developing 100 per cent indigenous kits – in both liquid and solid state form – under the Kodoy Open Source Stack license which are in various stages of manufacturing and approvals.