Lucknow: CSIR-CDRI is celebrating its 70th Annual Day on the 17th February, 2021. On his opening remark Director CSIR-CDRI, Professor Tapas Kundu welcomed the dignitaries of the program and briefed about the achievements of institute in the reporting year. Guest of honour Dr Shekhar Mande, Director General, CSIR and Professor Sandeep Verma, Secretary, SERB, DST, Government of India also congratulated the staff on Institute’s 70th Annual Day.
On this occasion, ‘Atal National Colloquium on Healthcare and Innovation’, a series of lectures from highly eminent persons, to commemorate Late Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayeeji’s vision and support for ‘Vigyan’ and CSIR-CDRI was inaugurated by Hon’ble Union Minister Health & Family Welfare, Science and Technology and Earth Sciences and Vice President CSIR, Dr. Harsh Vardhan.
In his inaugural address he said, “CSIR-CDRI has championed the cause of affordable drugs and has given the world breakthrough molecules like Centchroman (first non-steroidal oral contraceptive) and Arteether (lifesaving drug for cerebral malaria) amongst others. The contribution of the institute has been immense, not only in terms of drugs it gave to human kind but also in terms of quality fundamental research and human resource development”.
Dr Atul Goel and team started working on this technology in the month of July 2020, when the cost of the testing of COVID-19 was nearly Rs 4000-5000/- per sample. Dr. Atul Goel informed that qRT-PCR is the most robust and reliable method of testing for the SARS-COV-2 infection, which utilizes costly imported TAQMAN probes for testing. Our Indian technology of fluorescent dyes and quenchers will reduce the dependency on the supply of reagents and kits from foreign manufacturers. Our larger goal is a capacity building for India to make India self-reliant, he added.
Dr. Shradha Goenka, M.D., Biotech Desk said that she is very excited as their company would produce a completely indigenous Covid-19 testing kit: the INDIFLUOR-COVID but is also looking to extend the use these fluorophores and quenchers in a variety of biological application which involves DNA and protein labelling and detection of infections, obviating the need to import fluorescence based research tools taking India a step closer to “Atmanirbharta”.
Dr Ashish Arora, Dr. Niti Kumar and Dr. N Damodara Reddy’s group worked on conjugating and purifying the probes and demonstrated their successful application for detection of SARS-CoV-2 by RT-PCR.
