India’s Covid Bio Data To Watch

Context: The department of biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, has made tremendous efforts in promoting bioscience research, translational education and entrepreneurship.

Role of Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in the fight against Covid-19

• Vaccine development: DBT announced Mission Covid Suraksha to accelerate development of 5-6 vaccine candidates.
  • DBT set up animal study and immunoassay labs, clinical trial and testing facilities, capabilities for process and cell line development, good manufacturing practices (GMP) and harmonised regulatory protocols.
• Biorepositories and genome sequencing: Indian Sars-CoV-2 Genomic Consortium (Insacog) was launched in December 2020 to ascertain the status of new mutant variants of Sars-CoV-2 and to establish sentinel surveillance for early detection of genomic variants that are of public health concern.
• Development of indigenous medical solutions: Facilitation of nearly 80 industry and academic collaborations for diagnostics, new therapies, drug repurposing, vaccine development, etc.
  • National Biopharma Mission, DBT is supporting the development of India’s first indigenously developed DNA vaccine candidate against Covid-19, ZyCoV-D, by Zydus Cadila.
  • Seed funding for Gennova’s next-generation, mRNA-based vaccine manufacturing platform.
  • Birac’s support to Pune-based Mylab in developing India’s first indigenous RT-PCR test kit for the novel coronavirus helped India ramp up testing significantly.
• India’s ‘science diplomacy’: DBT is providing advisory support to low and middle-income countries for executing Phase 3 clinical trials and immunogenicity testing of potential vaccines.
  • It is also facilitating Phase 3 clinical trials of Indian Covid vaccines in neighbouring and friendly countries under PACT (Partnerships for Accelerating Clinical Trials) programme.
• Support to entrepreneurship and innovation: Through the National Biomedical Resource Indigenisation Consortium (NBRIC) and BIRAC.
  • National Biomedical Resource Indigenisation Consortium (NBRIC) brings together academia, industry, startups and MSMEs to facilitate indigenous capacity building.
  • Birac’s incubator network supported over 100 companies engaged in providing Covid solutions.

Conclusion: The ecosystem created over the last few decades by DBT has enabled biotechnology in India to grow from a fledgling sector to a sunrise industry.