New Delhi: The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, or IIT Delhi, has tied up and signed an agreement with Wells Fargo and United Way of Bengaluru to develop a “peptide-based” ELISA test for the detection of COVID-19 antibodies.
ELISA, short for serological enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, determines whether a person possesses antibodies for COVID-19 in the blood. The test results can help fight COVID-19 in many ways including identifying individuals with antibodies who can donate their blood as part of an experimental treatment of infected patients.
The Principal Investigator of the project, Dr Anurag S Rathore, Dean, Corporate Relations and Professor, Chemical Engineering Department, IIT Delhi in a statement said: “Testing for COVID-19 continues to be a bottleneck at present. Options that are available in the market offer limited accessibility and affordability. This project- a collaboration between IIT Delhi and National Chemical Laboratory (NCL), Pune – has the potential of making a meaningful difference to this situation by enabling affordable, home-based testing.”
Wells Fargo will fund the project while UWBe will facilitate its implementation. The Dean further added: “We are thankful to Wells Fargo, our Corporate CSR Partner, and United Way of Bengaluru, our CSR NGO Partner for their support. This collaboration highlights IIT Delhi’s strength in healthcare.” This research aims at developing a peptide-based, ELISA-based diagnostic, serological assay against COVID-19. We also aim to create an economical, commercial process for manufacturing the antigens used in ELISA and home-based diagnostic kits to offer an effective, quick, robust and affordable diagnostic solution for the COVID-19 outbreak, Prof Rathore added.
This research will utilise the microplate-based enzyme immune-assay technique. The choice of antigen will be a peptide that has been identified computationally. Structural analysis of the available complex is performed to design a novel peptide that has a complementary property with spike protein of COVID-19. A set of peptides will be designed using a combination approach to test their binding. From the sequences of the variable regions of the Heavy and Light chain including the novel designed peptide, cloning of the mAb fragment (CV-Fab) will be performed. CV-Fab will be produced from which ELISA based testing kits will be created.
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