Hyderabad, May 2 (IANS): Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research-India Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT) on Saturday announced that it has developed indigenous RT-PCR kits for COVID-19 testing in partnership with Genomix Biotech

CSIR-IICT developed an affordable reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) kit indigenously using recombinant technology for production of several enzymes used in the kit and optimized the reagent conditions to match the regulatory requirements.

Genomix Biotech will optimize the kit for COVID-19 diagnosis by adding the Taqman probes. CSIR-IICT and Genomix Biotech plan to approach Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) or its recognized laboratory for validation to launch the product in a couple of weeks.

Hyderabad-based IICT said that this collaboration will enable production of affordable quality RT-PCR kit and help meet the huge demand of the country during this COVID-19 pandemic.

The availability of RT-PCR kits in the market has serious limitations as most of them are currently imported.

Further, the RT-PCR kit developed by CSIR-IICT can also be used in various other disease diagnostics of humans, animals and plants.

This technology is also expected to bring down the overall cost of RT-PCR based diagnosis in the country.