Bengaluru: Research Center Infectious Disease (CIDR) at the Indian Science Institute (IISC) will get a Covid-19 vaccine test center that will test solutions – vaccines, antiviruses, materials and equipment – from academic and industrial partners to overcome pandemics.
A new center, to come in Viral Bio Safety Level-3 (BSL-3) facilities in CIDR, funded by the Biotechnology Department (DBT) of the biotechnology industry research aid.
Testing will be on the Fe-Forservice model.
Umesh Varshney, Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Biology of Cell (MCB), has assigned the establishment of special BSL-3 viral facilities in CIDR with funding from the DBTIISC partnership, to support research on human viruses that are very pathogenous.
The construction of facilities was completed in October 2020, “said IISC in a statement.
BSL-3 facility, which was assigned by Umesh Varshney, Professor, Microbiology Department and Biology (MCB) before a hit pandemic, became operational in January 2021 under the guidance of Usha Vijayraghavan, Dean, Division of Biology.
Shashank Tripathi, Assistant Professor, MCB, was appointed as a nodal person responsible for the facility.
It is available for academic laboratories (inside and outside IISC) and industry, for training personnel and carrying out antivirus research.
” On Feb 2021, Tripathi Lab – Studies that emerged viral pathogens – began working on building cell cultural and animal models to study SARS-COV-2 in the BSL-3 virus priority facility.
These include the isolation, growth and characterization of the SARS-COV-2 virus from the sample of Covid-19 patients, and the formation of the Syrian Hamster model to evaluate the covid-19 vaccine and antivirus, “the statement was read.
This reagent and model, IISC said, used to identify Antivirus SARS-COV-2, and evaluates the subunit covid-19 subunit vaccine candidate developed by the team led by Raghavan Varadarajan, professor, molecular biophysics unit, working with Mynvax startup.