Reliance develops RT-PCR kit that can give COVID-19 results in two hrs

New Delhi: Reliance Life Sciences has developed an RT-PCR kit that promises diagnosis of COVID-19 infection in about 2 hours, company sources said.

At present, COVID-19 RT-PCR test, which is a real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid from SARS-CoV-2, takes up to 24 hours to give a diagnosis.

The sources said 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. RT-PCR kit is so far considered as Gold standard.

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

ICMR's validation process does not approve/disapprove the kit design as well as it does not certify user-friendliness.

The sources said the kit can detect the presence of E-gene, R-gene, RdRp gene of SARS COV2 virus with Actin as an internal control. As per ICMR results, the kit shows 98.7 per cent sensitivity and 98.8 per cent specificity. This kit is a complete indigenous development by the R&D scientists working at the firm, they said, adding one biggest advantage of this kit is that it is simple to use and uses readily available simple reagents and primers which can be synthesised in India.

The diagnosis time is approximately 2 hours, they added.A separate study by Reliance Life Sciences has indicated that the death rate for COVID-19 pandemic may significantly reduce by the end of 2020. The study showed mutation occurrence of structural and non-structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 form more than 7,000 genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 virus from 49 countries.