MegaLab ropes in ICT Mumbai as second partner

The IIT Alumni Council, which is setting up the country's largest testing facility for all infectious diseases amid the coronavirus pandemic, has roped in the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai as its second institutional partner.

The IIT Alumni Council, which is setting up the country's largest testing facility for all infectious diseases amid the coronavirus pandemic, has roped in the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT) Mumbai as its second institutional partner. The MegaLab, which will begin functioning from next month, had already announced partnership with the Mumbai University earlier this month

ICT will support in developing the RTqPCR 2.0 testing stack to be deployed in the MegaLab, the council said in a statement on Wednesday. The RTqPCR 2.0 stack to be deployed will have ability to do multiple concurrent molecular diagnostic tests for COVID-19, tuberculosis, dengue, chikungunya, HIV, hepatitis, select cancers and some sexually transmitted diseases. It will also enable rapid thermocycling to achieve a 30-minute test time and ability to mount various versions of the microfluidic RTqPCR systems in vehicles, including Ola cabs and COVID-19 test buses of BEST with which the council has already tied up with. The stack will be designed ground up for using saliva and other low viral load samples such as sewage instead of throat swabs using PCR nesting for COVID testing, it said. "The IIT Alumni Council is happy to welcome ICT Mumbai as its second institutional partner for the MegaLab and RTPCR 2.0 initiative. The MegaLab, which will be able to test 1 crore people a month on reaching full capacity by September, will serve as the first key component of the national infrastructure for testing of infectious diseases. "The process development and technology strengths of ICT, their alumni, students and faculty will accelerate our path to self-sufficiency and global supremacy in this field," said Ravi Sharma, president of the council

"The MegaLab 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 Anirudha Pandit, member of the board of governors of IIT Bombay, and the vice-chancellor of ICT Mumbai. The IIT Alumni Council, along with partner organisations, has helped rapidly deploy innovative technologies to meet the health crisis perpetuated by the pandemic. These include AI-based digital X-ray systems, contactless isolation centre configurations, IOT systems for virtual hospitals, pool-testing algorithms for RTPCR, COVID-19 test buses and cabs, open indigenous technology stacks and ultra-compact indigenous ultrasound scanners with portable gene sequencing. The partnership with ICT will help the MegaLab upgrade the conventional RTqPCR kit manufacturing and testing lines to meet RTPCR 2.0 targets on kit transportation and storage at room temperature, lower the cost of test (as it consumes less from kit material) and more samples through higher pooling ratio. ICT Mumbai was started by the Bombay University in October 1993 as the department of chemical technology to help advance knowledge reserves in chemical science and technology. Since then, it has grown to become a premier deemed university devoted to education, training, research and industrial collaboration in chemical engineering, chemical technology, applied chemistry, pharmacy, biotechnology and bio-processing.

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