Reliance Home Grown RT-PCR Kit Assures Coronavirus Diagnosis in Two Hours

Reliance Life Sciences has come up with an RT-PCR kit that assures diagnosis of Covid-19 infection in around two hours, as per the company sources. Currently, the RT-PCR test is a real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2, takes almost 24 hours to give a diagnosis.

The company sources said that the computational biologists at Reliance Life Sciences, a subsidiary of billionaire Mukesh Ambani-run Reliance Industries Ltd, analysed more than 100 genomes of SARS-CoV-2 sequenced in India and designed unique RT-PCR primers for developing quantitative-Real Time PCR (RT-PCR) kit for Covid-19 detection.

The RT-PCR kit is so far considered the gold standard for testing.

The kit, developed by scientist Reliance Life Sciences, is called the R-Green Kit (SARS COV2-Real-time PCR) and has been technically validated by ICMR for satisfactory performance, the sources said.

The ICMR validation process does not approve/disapprove of the kit design and does not certify ease of use. Sources said that the kit could detect the presence of SARS COV2 virus E gene, R gene, RdRp gene with Actin as an internal control.

Based on ICMR results, the kit shows a sensitivity of 98.7% and a specificity of 98.8%. This kit is a full indigenous development by the R&D scientists working at the company, they said, adding that the biggest advantage of this kit is that it is easy to use and uses readily available simple reagents and primers that can be synthesized in India. Diagnostic time is about 2 hours, they added.

A separate study by Reliance Life Sciences has indicated that the death rate from the Covid-19 pandemic may be significantly reduced by the end of 2020. The study showed that the structural and non-structural protein mutation of SARS-CoV-2 forms more of 7,000 genomes. SARS-CoV-2 virus sequences from 49 countries. Statistical analysis showed an inverse correlation between the mutation rates of two NSP6 proteins and the surface glycoprotein (S) with the death rate, according to the study published in the Scientific Journal of Biology. Mutations in these two proteins have been predicted to grow steadily, while the death rate will fall below 0.5% by the end of 2020 in Group I countries (India and Bangladesh).

In the study, the mutation rate of NSP6 and S proteins in group II country (USA) was found to be lower than in group I and group III countries (Australia and New Zealand).

So, it has been proposed that in group II country, the death rate from the Covid-19 pandemic will weaken later than in group I and III countries, the study says. Reliance also obtained a US patent for genetically modified microalgae said to reduce mortality in coronavirus cases. The US patent issued the patent on September 8.