CCMB to grow coronavirus in human cells

HYDERABAD: The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) will be culturing the novel Coronavirus in human lung epithelial cells, which will enable in-vitro tests of potential drugs and vaccines against Covid-19. For this, the CCMB has tied up with a Bengaluru-based company, Eyestem Research Private Limited.

In a media release on Monday, the CCMB said under this public-private collaboration against Covid-19, it will get to use Eyestem’s human lung epithelial cell culture system provided as part of its Anti-Covid Screening (ACS) platform. This will help understand the molecular and pathological characteristics of the novel Coronavirus and establish a rational basis for testing potential drugs in-vitro.  

CCMB Director Dr Rakesh Mishra said, “Culturing the virus outside the human host is a technological challenge that needs to be overcome. Eyestem’s cell culture system expresses the ACE2 receptor and other genes that are key determinants of viral entry and replication.”

“We hope that employing this system will allow the CCMB team led by Dr Krishnan Harshan to grow the virus predictably and thereby open up the potential for the drug screening and vaccine development strategies,” he added.

Simply put, to conduct tests and understand the virus as well as to see if any drug or vaccine is effective against it, there must be enough virus available to conduct these tests. Till now, CCMB has been growing this virus on cells collected from the African Green Monkey but with this new collaboration, it can grow the virus in human cells. This will help in getting a clearer picture of the genetic make-up of the virus.

It will also give a more accurate analysis of the effect a particular drug or vaccine might have on the virus inside a human being. However, the culture of virus in the monkey cells will also simultaneously continue. The ACS platform at Eyestem has been developed by Dr Rajarshi Pal and his team.