Author: Biotech Express

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday announced ₹23,220 crore for public health sector for setting up paediatric beds and facilities in hospitals. She announced this for the public health sector, earmarked for this financial year, which will focus on emergency preparedness with a special emphasis on children and paediatric care. It will also focus on funding of medical HR augmentation through nurses and staff and doctors, equipment and ambulances, oxygen plants. Nirmala Sitharaman announced a credit guarantee scheme of Rs 1.1 lakh crore for the COVID-affected sectors, which includes Rs 50,000 crore for scaling up medical infrastructure in non-metro cities…

Five major pharmaceutical companies–Cipla Limited, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd, Emcure Pharmaceuticals Limited, Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Limited and Torrent Pharmaceuticals Limited on Tuesday announced collaboration for the clinical trial of the investigational oral anti-viral drug Molnupiravir for the treatment of mild covid-19 in an outpatient setting in India. Between March and April this year, these five pharma companies had individually entered into a non-exclusive voluntary licensing agreement with Merck Sharpe Dohme (MSD) to manufacture and supply Molnupiravir to India and over 100 low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Molnupiravir is an oral anti-viral that inhibits the replication of multiple RNA viruses including…

Drugmaker Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has announced the commercial launch of 2-deoxy-D-glucose (2-DG), an oral drug, found to help speed up recovery and reduce oxygen dependence. The oral drug has been developed by Institute of Nuclear Medicine and Allied Sciences (INMAS), a lab of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), in collaboration with Dr Reddy’s Laboratories (DRL), Hyderabad. The drug comes in a powder form in a sachet and is taken orally by dissolving it in water. The drug accumulates in the virus-infected cells and prevents virus growth by stopping viral synthesis and energy production. The drug will stop the virus…

Celemics, a Korean manufacturer of targeted capture kits for next-generation sequencing, is combining its bioinformatics pipeline with analytics technology from Strand Life Sciences to help researchers go from sample to report using a single technology platform. Under terms of the partnership, Bengaluru, India-based Strand Life Sciences will integrate the Celemics pipeline into its StrandOmics tertiary analysis platform. This integrated offering will include assay-specific variant filters to provide “guaranteed” clinical-grade data compliance for researchers in cancer and rare diseases, according to the companies. Strand Life Sciences is a global bioinformatics and genomic profiling company established in 2000. Strand Life Sciences, formed…

The Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi (IIT Delhi) on Friday launched a rapid diagnostic kit for conducting Covid-19 test at a price point of Rs 50 a piece. Authorities and researchers claimed that this will boost testing in rural India given its affordability, easy to use and effectiveness in temperature as high as 35 degree to 37 degree Celsius. The kit developed by centre for biomedical engineering at the IIT Delhi has been approved by the Indian Council of Medial Research (ICMR). The test kit has been licensed to Delhi-based Dia Sure Immunodiagnostic LLP for mass manufacturing and marketing.…

DIVOC Health has received an import license from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) for Genedrive 96 SARS-CoV-2 testing kits in India, the startup said in a statement. It also said that the Genedrive 96 SARS-CoV-2 Kit has been designed by molecular diagnostics Genedrive located in the United Kingdom, and has also received formal approval from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). On receiving the approval, Dr Kanav Kahol, founder and CEO, DIVOC Health, said, “We thank the diagnostic division of the Ministry of Health for considering our proposal and allowing us to deliver quality results to the…

Genetic sequences from more than 200 virus samples of early Covid-19 cases mysteriously disappeared from an online scientific database. A researcher in Seattle reported the recovery of 13 of those original sequences. While the Fred Hutchison Cancer Center researcher, Jesse Bloom, clarifies that the sequences themselves do not definitively answer the question of origin, it does show that the samples being used to investigate may not be complete. The files had been uploaded to a U.S. National Institutes of Health database in March 2020. But the NIH received a request from the investigator who submitted to delete the sequences three…

Following the controversial statement on allopathy, the Indian Medical Association’s (IMA) offensive stance against Swami Ramdev continues. After complaints from the PMM and defamation case of 1000 crores, a complaint has been lodged against them in Delhi and now in Chhattisgarh’ as well. On behalf of the IMA, the Secretary-General, Dr. Jayesh Lele has filed this complaint. In the complaint given in Delhi’s IP State Police Station, IMA said that Swami Ramdev is raising doubts about the vaccine in the minds of people, obstructing the work of government employees. The complaint letter further states, ‘Ramdev and his associates have done…

The Haridwar district administration ordered a probe after reports emerged that over one lakh fake tests were conducted during the religious gatherings. According to reports, the labs apparently did so to meet the daily testing quota of 50,000 tests set by Uttarakhand High Court. Twenty-two private labs had been hired to conduct Covid testing during Kumbh MelaHundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered in the city of Haridwar for a ritual bath in the Ganges River between April 1 and April 30, amid a massive surge in coronavirus cases during the second wave. The violation of Covid-19 protocols at the gathering…

Celemics (www.celemics.com) co-founder and CEO Dr. Hyoki Kim announced a partnership with Strand Life Sciences, a leading precision medicine informatics company, to develop a bioinformatics solution capable of providing users with an accelerated means of producing high-quality, in-class clinical genomics reports and enabling a complete sample-to-answer solution, including assay-specific variant filters. Under the agreement, Strand Life Science will integrate the Celemics bioinformatics pipeline into the StrandOmics tertiary analysis platform to enable Celemics with a complete sample-to-report solution. Leveraging the StrandOmics platform, Celemics plans to serve an expanding global market with clinical-grade data compliance and guaranteed data residency for customers in…