By Our Correspondent
BENGALURU/NEW DELHI: CSIR constituent Lab in Bengaluru, CSIR-National Aerospace Laboratories (CSIR-NAL), along with MAF Clothing Pvt. Ltd., Bengaluru has developed and certified the overall protective coverall suit. The polyproplylene spun laminated multi-layered non-woven fabric based coverall can be used to ensure the safety of Doctors, Nurses, Paramedical staff and Health Care workers working round the clock on COVID-19 mitigation.
CSIR-NAL team lead by Dr. Harish C Barshilia, Dr. Hemant Kumar Shukla, and Mr. M J Viju of MAF have worked quickly to find the solution to the problem by identifying suitable indigenous materials and innovative manufacturing processes.
The Coveralls have gone through stringent testing at SITRA, Coimbatore and have been qualified for use. CSIR-NAL and MAF have plans to augment the production capacity to about 30,000 units per day within four weeks’ time.
Jitendra J Jadhav, Director, CSIR-NAL has stated that the major advantages of these Coveralls are that they are highly competitive in price as compared to other manufacturers and the import content is negligible. He appreciated the efforts of NAL, MAF Clothing Pvt Ltd and SITRA team who have worked round the clock for this national cause by accelerating the development and certification process.
Meanwhile, working on three out of the five verticals formulated by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the Central Drug Research Institute (CDRI), has inked an MoU (memorandum of understanding) with King George’s Medical University (KGMU) to sequence the virus strains obtained from COVID-19 patients in Uttar Pradesh. Initially, the Lucknow-based lab will sequence the virus strains from the samples of a few patients. This activity will be taken up under the first vertical ‘digital and molecular surveillance’.
As of now, eight different variants of the virus are known to be causing the COVID-19 infection. A team has been put into place for analyzing whether changes to the viral sequences, if any, will impact the proposed treatment strategies.
Therapeutics or repurposing of drugs to fight against COVID-19 is the second vertical where CDRI is getting involved. Under this, the researchers are trying to repurpose some already existing drugs that have been used by clinicians. “One of the fastest ways to get therapeutics to the patient is through repurposing known drugs against COVID-19 infection. Here, CDRI has identified several candidate drugs for repurposing and will develop them further under the collaboration,” said Professor Tapas Kumar, Director, CSIR-CDRI.
The institution has a diverse library of molecules and these have been screened using in silico approaches against a panel of drug targets from SARS-CoV-2 under the third vertical, ‘target-based screening systems’. The identified hits will be evaluated in a preliminary drug-target-based screen (primary screen). “The m-protease, CL-proteinase, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, Spikeprotein-ACE2 system, and other targets are presently being worked on. Their binding/inhibition will also be evaluated in in vitro and in vivo systems with the help of sister laboratories and KGMU,” said Dr Kumar.
Professor Amita Jain will lead the team of scientists of KGMU, while Professor R. Ravishankar will lead the team of scientists from CSIR-CDRI. Dr Raj Kamal Tripathi, a virologist at CDRI and an alumnus of KGMU, is leading all the screening related work at CSIR-CDRI.
