New Delhi: Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC) has also created a provision to fund COVID-19 solutions that are ready for immediate deployment under a ‘Fast Track Review Process’.
Through a rolling multi tiered review mechanism, the proposals related to development of vaccines, devices, diagnostics, therapeutics and other interventions have been recommended for receiving financial support.
In addition anticipating long term need for diagnostics, DBT have also committed support for different types of diagnostics platforms like Bennett University, Greater Noida, JNU Delhi and various IITs. In total, 34 companies and academic institutes will receive financial support for ensuring there is no shortage of indigenous diagnostic kits in the near future, said a official release by Ministry of Science and Technology.
To accelerate development of vaccine, DBT has also identified institutes which will provide animal models for testing pre-clinical efficacy and also make available neutralization assays, said the release.
"Early development work for developing an Intranasal vaccine candidate for COVID-19 has also been awarded to Indian Institute of Chemical Technology.Delhi University has initiated work towards discovering neutralizing antibodies from an existing phage display based library and are being supported under National Biopharma Mission of DBT," release added.
To ensure complete indigenization of COVID diagnostics, support has already been provided to Andhra Pradesh Medtech Zone and other companies to scale-up production of RT-PCR kits.
To foster indigenous innovation focused on developing reagents and resources for diagnostics, vaccines and therapeutics for COVID-19, DBT has also launched a National Biomedical Resource Indigenization Consortium (NBRIC) in partnership with ABLE and CII.
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