New Delhi. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research or CSIR laboratory developed Feluda. It is a paper-based test strip for testing COVID-19. This name Feluda came from the name of fictional detective created by the Oscar winning Indian film director Satyajit Ray.
CSIR joined hands with Tata Sons for its deployment and widespread use for rapid mass testing on ground. It is expected to be as early as this month end.
Feluda is a completely indigenous scientific invention. Feluda has been designated for mitigating the ongoing Corona virus infection situation in the country. It is to cater to quality mass testing. It is a very affordable product. It is also very easy to use product. There is no need to be dependent any more on expensive Q-PCR machines.
The Feluda is developed by the CSIR’s Institute of Genomics and Integrated Biology or the IGIB.
“The CSIR labs such as CSIR IGIB have been working on deep science and are involved in developing cutting edge technology and I am happy to see that the leading industry, TATA group is partnering towards its deployment. The strong partnership with industry in tackling the novel coronavirus has been the hall mark of CSIR’s strategy in mitigation of COVID-19”. It was said by Shekhar C Mande, Director General, CSIR.
The CSIR IGIB and TATA Sons have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for licensing the know-how, related to “Developing of a kit for rapid and accurate diagnosis” of COVID-19.
“We are happy to enter into a partnership with IGIB of CSIR for further development and commercialisation of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats or CRISPR, based technology for COVID-19 detection.” It was said by BanmaliAgarwala, President, Infrastructure and Defence and Aerospace, TATA Sons.
He was talking on the innovative CRISPR Feluda test. He said” It uses a test protocol that is simple to administer and easy to interpret, enabling results to be made available to the medical fraternity in relatively lesser time, as compared to other tst protocols.”
