Anchored by Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms, C-CAMP on behalf of Bangalore Life Sciences Cluster and supported by Rockefeller Foundation, Indigenization of Diagnostics program or CCAMP-InDx in conjunction with National Biomedical Resources Consortium (N-BRIC), has enabled mass-scale availability of indigenously developed, ICMR/DCGI-approved COVID-19 diagnostic kits for Govt and private diagnostic labs facing any shortfall due to the current Tsunami of cases across India.
These kits are now directly accessible through the CCAMP-InDx deployed Marketplace platform designed pro-bono by TCS, that aims to connect kit buyers immediately with manufacturers.
The CCAMP-InDx Marketplace (web portal developed and supported by TCS) is up and running and companies that are on the portal can register their products, create "wants" and negotiate with suppliers. At this point in time 200+ products are registered on the portal. CCAMP now invites individual diagnostic labs, diagnostic lab chains, hospitals or pharma companies to join the portal.
As reports of delayed diagnosis due to overburdening of labs come in, hospitals are facing a huge challenge due to cases arriving late with complications already setting in. The need of the hour once again is aggressively ramped up testing so that symptoms can be controlled once under the healthcare regime. To achieve this, greater availability and accessibility to approved diagnostic kits is paramount.
Current waiting time for manufacturing and assembly of kits is about 8 weeks. These are make-or-break times. CCAMP-InDx and NBRIC as platforms have been critical for indigenizing kit development process and creating a pool of globally competitive, Made-in-India diagnostic kit manufacturers with potentially faster turnaround times.
InDx now has 115 registered MSMEs in the COVID molecular diagnostics space. More than 30 of them manufacture ICMR approved/validated and DCGI approved kits. The combined capacity of manufacture of this group of companies can jointly address the present demand of approximately 1 Million tests a day.
The kit developers are working with CCAMp-InDx for indigenisation, scale-up, quality and commercialisation. For many of them, InDx has been instrumental in validation and quality control studies to achieve global and Indian regulatory approvals including ICMR and CDSCO.
Not only kits, availability of sufficient kit reagents and components is equally important. The consortium’s comprehensive molecular diagnostics portfolio includes over 10 RAPID Antigen test kit manufacturers who can supply over 500,000-700,000 tests per day (immediately) with additional capacity for Viral Transport Media, Molecular Transport Media, Swabs, RNA extraction kits and Antibody tests for measuring vaccine efficacy.
C-CAMP believes that investment in capacity-building programs such as InDx and N-BRIC is now in a position of paying crucial returns and sincerely thanks collaborators, MSME members of these platforms, Academic partners (NCBS, inStem, IISER Pune, CCMB Hyderabad and IISc), Rockefeller Foundation for funding and Department of Biotechnology, Govt of India and the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to Govt of India for support.
As the country reels under this vicious Second Wave, CCAMP-InDx and N-BRIC can lead the fight back with resources for a vastly improved availability of diagnostic kits and enhanced connectivity between public healthcare system and Indian kit developers. The Indx-Market Place is now open for immediate business.
Both gold standard RT-PCR and antigen/antibody for serological surveys are available under these programs while the Marketplace is now open for access by all potential kit buyers.
Contact indx-support@ccamp.res.in Visit https://indx.ccamp.res.in/ for accessing Marketplace
Press Links
- https://twitter.com/CNBCTV18News/status/1385586094205325315?s=20 [CNBC TV 18]
- https://yourstory.com/socialstory/2021/04/c-camp-indx-announces-mass-scale-availability-tests-online-marketplace [YourStory]
- https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/initiative-makes-govt-approved-testing-kits-available-online/articleshow/82212657.cms?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=TOIDesktop [Times of India]
- https://bangaloremirror.indiatimes.com/bangalore/others/need-a-covid-kit-register-on-this-portal/articleshow/82222242.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst [Bangalore Mirror]
