What’s in the news?

• The Feluda test, a coronavirus detection test developed by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to be commercially soon.

Why are Feluda Tests better?

• The test, which still requires a nasal swab to be collected and sent to a lab, promises to be quicker than the gold-standard test because it doesn’t need the expensive RT-PCR (Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction) machine.
• In medicine and statistics, a gold standard test is usually the diagnostic test or benchmark that is the best available under reasonable conditions. Other times, a gold standard is the most accurate test possible without restrictions.
• A smaller, cheaper more portable machine called a thermocycler, which costs around ₹25,000, is employed and once the viral RNA is extracted, it takes anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to confirm presence of the virus.
• FELUDA, that stands for FNCAS9 Editor-Limited Uniform Detection Assay, is also unlike antigen tests in that it uses a CRISPR-cas9 based system and therefore more accurate in detecting the virus.
• CRISPR-cas9 is a genome-editing tool whose discovery won the Nobel Prize for chemistry this year.
• Compared to the RT-PCR test, it’s reportedly cheaper — about ₹500 per test compared to ₹1,200-₹1,600 for RT-PCR

Reference:

1. https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/coronavirus-feluda-test-to-be-commercially-available-by-month-end-csir-director-general/article32902741.ece