Bengaluru: In a bid to improve the health care infrastructure and the well-being of its citizens by leveraging biotechnology, the government of Karnataka plans to establish a Pandemic Centre, a Longevity Centre and a Bio-Centre at the Bangalore Bioinnovation Centre (BBC- Electronic City), Dr C N Aswath Narayan, Minister for IT/BT and S&T said on Thursday. The Longevity Centre will be named after Kannada superstar late Puneeth Rajkumar who died a few months back.
Speaking after launching the products developed by startups incubated by Bangalore Bio-innovation Centre (BBC)- entrepreneurship and translational research centre- of the department of IT/BT, he said, while the Pandemic Centre will facilitate the development of vaccines and medicines, the Longevity Centre named after the late actor hopes to curtail the untimely death of citizens. The Bio-Centre will cater to the needs of tissue samples required for R&D and innovations, the minister explained. The Bio-Banking which is to be set up will be the first of its kind in the country, he further added.
Bio-Centre will also facilitate the storage of biological materials such as throat swabs, urine, phlegm etc, along with tissue samples. This in turn will enable speeding up the identification of infectious/non-infectious diseases, he informed. Minister added this facility will further strengthen the pathological study of diseases.
“Currently the centre physically incubates 50 startups. BBC has facilitated the product launch of more than 30 products on national platforms among which 22 products were related to COVID mitigation. Ever since it started functioning in 2015, BBC has supported 150+ startups/Individuals through government schemes, physical incubation, funding and mentoring. About 1000 employments have been generated by its Incubates”, Narayan stated.
The total valuation of companies Incubated by BBC is around Rs 800 Crores and it has been working in the areas of Life Sciences, Agriculture, Food/Nutrition, Industrial Biotechnology and Environmental Biotechnology, he told.
The products launched were, DNA/RNA Extraction Automation Device & 1b) LAMP Master Mix (by Omix R & D Labs) which allows for fully automated DNA or RNA extraction for research purposes, NeoCheck Rapid Antigen Self-Testing Kit (NeoDx Biotech Labs) for the qualitative detection of SARS-CoV-2 in symptomatic & asymptomatic individuals, ReDx TripleH HIV, HBV, HCV RTPCR Detection Kit (by NeoDx Biotech Labs) to ensure an adequate supply of blood free from infectious diseases, Merisis™ CTC separation tube (by DiponED BioIntelligence) for separating disseminated circulating tumour cells from human peripheral blood, Intelligent Vision Analyser (iVA) (by Alfaleus Tech) for performing multiple types of eye tests, Svasthya (by Tantrotollan Solutions) for AI-based monitoring of respiratory and cardiac distress in patients using non-invasive bio-marking, and UPPER Ultraflo Mini (Innodeev Solutions) for ensuring breathable filtered air.
Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Chairperson, State Vision Group for BT, renowned Oncologist Dr Vishal Rao, Dr Jitendra Kumar, Managing Director, (BBC), Meena Nagaraj, MD, Karnataka Innovative Technology Society (KITS) and others were present.
