DRDO develops cheaper, faster test for H1N1

The product, which has been developed over a period of six months, is currently under multi-centre evaluation and awaits approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research and Drug Controller-General of India.

G Ilavazhagan, DRDO’s Director in-charge of Life Sciences, told Deccan Herald: “More than 1,000 clinical samples were evaluated and compared with samples tested by the real-time polymerised chain reaction (RTPCR ) system developed by the Communicable Disease Centre (CDC) of WHO. Our system has proved itself.”

The system is able to do the tests for only Rs 1,500 as opposed to around Rs 10,000 in CDC-developed kits. It will also work efficiently in villages as it does not use sophisticated instrument and can work without electricity. Before hitting the market, the DRDO has transferred the technology to two companies –– Bigtec, Bangalore and Ras Life Sciences, Hyderabad.

“When the CDC-developed kit and our kit tested a few hundred samples, the results tallied,” a well-placed source in DRDO said, adding that their kit had, in fact, diagnosed some samples missed by the CDC kit.

Ilavazhagan said the system was based on isothermal loop mediated amplification (Lamp) technique.

Ilavazhagan said: “It is a naked eye detection system with specific primers, after amplification and treatment with SYBR green dye.”

Moreover, compared to WHO kits, which take a long time for the tests, in some cases a whole day, the DRDO kit takes only an hour.

The reason for this, the source explained, is the WHO kits use the RTPCR methodology, which needs a sophisticated instrument named fluorescent detector.

The Lamp technique used by DRDO works efficiently without the fluorescent detector as every virus has a DNA structure and the loop of the DNA, specific to the virus, gets amplified in this system.

One can know whether the H1N1 sample is positive or negative based on the change of colour.

The new system is developed by DRDO’s Defence Research and Development Establishment, which has already developed kits for detecting chikungunya and dengue.