The Annual General Body Meeting of the Institute of Life Sciences Society, Bhubaneswar, was held at New Delhi on Friday being presided over by Union Minister for Science & Technology Dr Jitendra Singh. The Minister appreciated the important and relevant work of the ILS in the fields of high quality sciences translation and societal programmes.
The committee members complimented the institute for the work done on the area of Covid-19 pandemic. ILS Director Dr Ajay Parida said the ILS has carried out Covid testing (more than 3 lakhs RT-PCR tests), 9,000 genome sequencing of the samples collected from Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Maharashtra and immune-profiling of symptomatic and asymptomatic Covid patients.
Besides, the ILS has developed virus cultures for Covid-19 and established an Animal Biosafety Level 3 platform, a drug discovery platform and an immunogenicity platform to aid the Covid research.
The Minister suggested for use of these platforms by academic institutions, private industries and start-ups.
The ILS has also established a biotech incubator for promoting entrepreneurship in biotechnology and now hosts 20 start-ups in the area of agriculture, nutrition, health and devises.
The Minister advised that in commemoration of 75 years of the country’s independence, the ILS should promote 75 start-ups with an aim of creating skilled human resources and developing products as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat.
Odisha Minister of Science and Technology Ashok Panda participated in the meeting and appreciated the ILS’ significant contributions. He suggested for inclusion of more Aspirational Districts, particularly Kandhamal in the ILS’ future activities.