Neuberg Supratech will look for immune markers for the COVID-19 positive patients with the use of its in-house high throughput sequencing machines
Neuberg Supratech Reference Laboratory, Ahmedabad, a unit of Neuberg Diagnostics (a Start-up in the PathLab chain segment), has signed an MoU with Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC), a Gujarat Government arm, for developing COVID-19 recombinant vaccine and diagnostics.
The MoU was signed in the presence of Vijay Rupani, Chief Minister of Gujarat.
As part of the five years agreement (effective May 1, 2020), Neuberg Supratech will work on two projects for the Government of Gujarat.
The first project is for COVID-19 vaccine development, wherein Neuberg Supratech will look for immune markers for the COVID-19 positive patients. The company plans to use several of its in-house high throughput sequencing machines for this project.
The second project involves developing cost-effective post-viral extraction procedures. Currently, the spend is around Rs 3,500 for consumables for RT-PCR testing. Neuberg Supratech aims to bring the cost down to below Rs 1,000. For this Neuberg Supratech will optimise the RT-PCR testing consumables and procedures that are presently being used. This will also increase the testing capacity by two to three times and even the turnaround times will be bought down to within two hours.