ILS establishes cultures of coronavirus

BHUBANESWAR: Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), Bhubaneswar, has established in vitro cultures of coronavirus from the patient samples using Vero cells (host cells for growing viruses). Ajay Parida, director of the institute, said this here on Saturday.


He said the ILS team led by scientists Soma Chattopadhyay and Gulam H Syed have established the virus cultures. "It is a pure virus culture. We have cultured 17 different isolates of the virus. This culture will help in developing drug for Covid-19. Drug can be tested against these virus culture. If we manage to find a good strain after culture, it can be the candidate for vaccine development," he added.

ILS statement said studies using genome sequencing approaches are underway for understanding stability and detecting any mutation in established cultures. "It is a significant development as only three other laboratories from India has reported establishing virus cultures till date," said Parida.

Other three institutes were National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad and RMRC, Dibrugarh.

Parida said this will be a useful resource for the country in the fight against Covid-19. It will be helpful for future preparedness. These viral cultures will help academicians as well as industry for testing and validating various antiviral products contributing to diagnostic, cure and management of COVID-19 pandemic," he added.

ILS Bhubaneswar has set up laboratory for Covid-19 testing. It has tested around 45,000 samples since April this year. This national institute has been selected as one of the 16 institutions in the country for setting up a biorespository of clinical samples for furthering research and development efforts for Covid-19.