Union Minister hails scientific achievement of ILS

Bhubaneswar, Nov 12:The annual general body meeting of the Institute of Life Sciences (ILS) Society was held on Friday under the presidentship of Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister for Science and Technology. He appreciated the important and relevant work of ILS in the field of high-quality sciences translation and societal programmes. The committee members complimented the institute for the work done in the area of COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Ajay Parida, Director, ILS during his presentation highlighted that ILS has carried out COVID testing (more than 3 lakhs RT-PCR tests), 9000 genome sequencing of the samples collected from Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and Maharashtra and immune-profiling of symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID patients. In addition, 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, he said. The Minister suggested for use of these platforms by academic institutions, private industries, and start-ups. ILS has also established a Biotech incubator for promoting entrepreneurship in biotechnology and now hosts 20 startups in the area of agriculture, nutrition, health, and devises.   The Minister advised that in commemoration of 75 years of Independence, ILS should promote 75 start-ups with an aim of creating skilled human resources and developing products as part of Atmanirbhar Bharat. ILS has been working with the tribal communities of the Aspirational District of Nabarangpur in Odisha in promoting and enhancing income generation and creating awareness on nutrition. It has undertaken several initiatives for enhancing the incomes of women farmers through training and skill development. Odisha Minister of Science and Technology Ashok Chandra Panda participated in the meeting.  While appreciating the significant contributions of ILS, he suggested for inclusion of more aspirational districts particularly Kandhamal district in the ILS future activities.