India developed its first indigenous paper-based testing kit for Coronavirus. The kit called Feluda will act as a catalyst in increasing testing in India as its use requires no specialized skills and costs very low compared to RT-PCR tests. Tata Sons has signed an MoU to manufacture it on a large scale. Complete Coverage: Coronavirus
Crux of the Matter
Feluda to the Rescue Again Feluda is a paper-based test strip to identify the presence of Coronavirus in a sample. It was developed at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (CSIR-IGIB) of the Council of Science & Industrial Research in New Delhi by Dr. Souvik Maiti and Dr. Debojyoti Chakraborty. Kit gets its name from ‘Feluda’ – a famous Bengali fictional detective character penned by Satyajit Ray. It is India’s first indigenous paper testing kit.
Feluda’s Features Feluda will increase the number of tests, make the testing process rapid and efficient. The cost of one test would be around ₹500 as compared to ₹4500/test of the RT-PCR tests. This paper kit gives results in around 30 minutes. Also, no specialized skills are required to use it – it is as easy to use as a pregnancy kit.
If successfully commercialised, it would allow the test to be done in local path-labs that do not have expensive real time PCR machines, but simple cheap thermo-blocks used for conventional PCR. Anurag Agarwal, Director, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB)
A Catalyst To Increased Testing The government said that Tata Sons has signed an MoU with CSIR-IGIB for licenced production of the kits. Tata Sons has said that it will begin mass production of Feluda. At present India is also producing around 2.5 lakh Peronsal Protective Equipment per day. Among countries with more than 1,000 COVID-related deaths, India has conducted the second-highest tests, only after Germany.
We are happy to enter into a partnership with IGIB of CSIR for further development and commercialisation of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) based technology for COVID-19 detection. Banmali Agrawala, President – Infrastructure, Defence & Aerospace,Tata Sons
Curiopedia
Satyajit Ray’s character Feluda, which serves as an inspiration behind the name of the paper strip based test, is itself inspired from Sherlock Holmes. When Ray started writing on crime fiction, the character Sherlock Holmes penned by Arthur Conan Doyle inspired his writings. Feluda’s character resembles Sherlock Holmes and Tapesh/Topshe’s character resembles Dr. Watson.
Satyajit Ray was an Indian filmmaker, screenwriter, music composer, graphic artist, lyricist and author, widely regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. He has received 32 Indian National Film Awards, an Academy Honorary Award in 1992 and the Government of India also honored him with the Bharat Ratna in 1992.
Litmus is a water-soluble mixture of different dyes extracted from lichens. It is often absorbed onto filter paper to produce one of the oldest forms of pH indicator, used to test materials for acidity. Litmus was used for the first time in about 1300 by Spanish physician Arnaldus de Villa Nova.
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