Voxtur Bio Ltd., a Mumbai-based in-vitro diagnostics (IVD) company, has launched an advanced point of care rapid Neutralising antibody test kit VoxPress COVID-19 for detecting neutralizing antibodies.
The neutralizing antibody rapid test is the fastest and most convenient test format that gives information on the presence or absence of a neutralizing antibody. The plaque reduction neutralising test and Elisa methods are very expensive and require sophisticated instruments and trained person to perform the test. On the other hand, VoxPress COVID-19 neutralizing antibody is a lateral flow test that detects IgG antibodies to spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, from a small finger prick of blood in only 15 minutes.
VoxPress COVID-19 is affordable and comes with rapid turnaround time (15 minutes), high specificity (94%) and sensitivity (100%) and long shelf life of 24 months. It has advantages over the other methods in many ways such as no specific laboratory requirements, no need for specific training of the analyst along with field applicability, easy scalability and mass screening possibility.
Understanding immunity and preparing response are at the core of the COVID-19 pandemic exit strategy. VoxPress COVID-19 fulfils the requirement for neutralizing antibody testing for monitoring immunity and vaccine effectiveness.
Neutralising antibody tests monitor or detect prior COVID-19 infection, confirm if someone has produced an immune response following infection and monitor antibody vaccine response.
According to reports, few SARS-CoV-2 variants have shown moderate to high resistance to current COVID-19 vaccines. Thus vaccination cannot specify someone immune after being vaccinated. It can only be detected through measuring neutralizing antibodies.
VoxPress COVID-19 will prove useful for the authorities in the government to take decisions on either maintaining or relaxing the COVID restrictions. By facilitating pre-screening of patients prior to vaccination, it can also support immunisation usage and deployment.
“VoxPress COVID-19 will help in COVID-19 investigations of sero-prevalence, assessing herd immunity, the long existence of protective immunity, and the efficacy of different vaccine candidates as well as tracking chain of infection. The kit will facilitate qualitative detection of neutralising antibody in Serum, Plasma or Whole blood specimens of previously infected or COVID-19 vaccinated individuals. Largescale antibody testing would help to identify immune individuals, allowing them to carry on with their day-to-day lives. Having said that, critical for contagion, negative antibody testing would identify those that are not immune, thus alerting those individuals to be more cautious. VoxPress COVID-19 will enable employers’ to offer a safe and convenient return to the work. As neutralising antibody tests are critical for adopting precautionary measures against COVID – 19 variants and ensuring effective roll-out of Covid 19 precaution booster dose, we have built with the dedicated manufacturing capacity to meet the demand, “said Dr. Veeraal Gandhi, Managing Director and Chairman, Voxtur Bio Ltd.
