Author: Biotech Express

By Hridya Susan Varughese, PhD scholar, Veterinary College, Bengaluru- 560024 Disinfection is the simplest way of preventing infections by eliminating pathogens. The ongoing corona viral pandemic is a steady reminder of its importance. In principle, it has been in practice since centuries with sulphur compounds being used for disinfection fromthe 18th century plague outbreaks. While use of copper, mercury, salts, alkalis, acids and plant extracts were chemical methods, filtration, burning, fumigation and burial were physical methods. Closer to the 19th century, tyndallisation and autoclaving gained momentum focusing on bacterial spores 1 .The existence of micro-organisms explored by Louis Pasteur…

by Kamal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, Biotech Express Corresponding author: kamal9871@gmail.com In India, ‘Lockdown’ was imposed on March 21, 2020 but a team of scientists headed by Prof Shailendra Saxena from KGMU performed the best possible experiments in early January, as soon as World Health Organization published out first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus, with a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, to know about the genetic and biochemical machinery and tried to get as much information as possible for the risk assessment and making a vaccine for prevention. In his pioneer original research paper from India,…

By Kamal Pratap Singh and Seema Pavgi Upadhye Introduction India is a country of around 1.3 billion living in as congested places like Dharavi in Mumbai to spacious lush green Lutyen’s zone of Delhi. Handling world’s second most population is not an easy task but the situation till now is under the control. However, there are few who speculate that we have just postponed the pandemic which will come after lifting up the lockdown or may recur like other viral infections. There has been around two months (in India) since the lockdown which has led life to travel on road.…

by S. Dravida, PhD Founder and CEO, Transcell Biologics World Health Organization (WHO) has named SARS-CoV2 (a new format of corona virus) as COVID-19 while declaring it as causative agent of the pandemic outbreak in 2020 with roots from China. According to a recent publication of the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR), currently, there are no approved stem cell-based approaches neither for prevention nor treatment of COVID-19 infection. Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are being researched and trialed as one of the therapeutic tools in the treatment of COVID19. The hypothesis on which MSCs are being trialed is that…

by Anil V. Shah, R. M. Ramanuj, K. B. Vaghela and Sunita Varjani* Gujarat Pollution Control Board, Sector-10A, Gandhinagar – 382010, Gujarat, India. *Corresponding author: drsvs18@gmail.com Abstract Viruses may occur, survive and/or decay much differently from bacteria in water. Pathogens, if not removed properly from wastewater may enter in water bodies and cause infections. Among the diseases caused by viruses some have been reported severe. COVID-19, SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are recent examples of how coronaviruses infect humans. We have no tools to control the disease except social isolation. COVID-19 is enveloped, non-segmented, positive-sense RNA virus having high mutation rate and…

Dear Honorable Prime Minister Modi ji: As I am aware of the fact that you have to listen scientific people around you for scientific suggestions but let me bring some facts to you. World Health Organization puts out statistics on various causes of deaths in each country every year. I checked for one recent year, in India, 1.23 million people died of diarrhoeal diseases compared to 18000 in China. Influenza, pneumonia and TB together killed about 1.1 million people compared to 0.75 million in China. Another 4 or 5 million people are dying in each year from heart problems, stroke,…

By Anonymous Writer Despite having huge money flow in this biological pandemic Indian Bioscience sector is looking at the backfront in recent announcement of G.O.I of AtmaNirbhar Package Rs 20 lakh crore package announced in five tranches by FM Sitharaman stood at Rs 20,97,053 crore, included the Rs 1.92 lakh crore stimulus from measures announced by PM Modi recently such as the Pradhan Matri Garib Kalyan Package worth Rs 1.7 lakh crore. The first set of relief measures announced by Nirmala Sitharaman focused on enabling the Indian economy’s backbone – MSMEs that employ around 11 crore people and have a…

Contents in this Issue Coronavirus2 Special Issue: All you need to know about SARS-CoV2 and COVID19 Virology Expert View: How to Tackle Coronavirus Transmission and Possible Route of Exit from Lockdown Mental Health Expert Views: Meet your mental health  experts for COVID-19 related Stress Why India has gain advantage over COVID19 pandemic? Impact of COVID19  on Global and Indian Economy COVID19 Diagnosis: Past present and future COVID19 Cure: Race against SARS-CoV2 & COVID19 Covid19 News of Focus • Scientists, led by Shailendra K. Saxena is the first Indian group to work on CoV vaccine • Hydroxychloroquine in Coronavirus pandemic •…

by  Kamal Pratap Singh, Managing Editor, Biotech Express E-mail- kamal9871@gmail.com Coronaviruses (CoVs): Introduction Coronaviruses (CoV) are member of a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. There are many diverse groups of viruses and each group contains further more different viruses (see complete phylogeny here). Novel CoV-2019’s story is not very old, a new group of viruses with the name of coronaviruses have been recognized by an informal group of virologists who have sent their conclusions to Nature and consequently in 1975 the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) approved the creation of…

Why India has gain advantage over COVID19 pandemic? A lesson till now by Kamal Pratap Singh and Vaibhav Sharma(PhD, AIIMS) India has gain advantage of not becoming a victim of death-air created by Coronavirus named SARS-CoV2 which has swallowed more than 1.5 million lives as on 20th April 2020. According to one website www.worldometers.com the global death rate per million of population is 12.4 as on April 16 ,which means these many people died out of 1 million (10 lakh) people of global population (7.8 billion). Though the virus originated in China it had hurt many countries with severe…