ICMR invites cos to develop its anti-serum against Covid

MUMBAI: Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has invited applications from vaccine makers for developing and scaling up the equine antiserum against SARS-Cov-2 virus, which was isolated by National Institute of Virology. The equine sera that uses antibodies from horses is commonly used to develop vaccines.

Antiserum is a blood serum that contains antibodies against a virus that can be injected to prevent or treat an infection. Some common examples of antisera are the antivenoms used against snake bites, anti-rabies, anti-tetanus, among others.

The ICMR will grant a non-exclusive licence to the manufacturer, a royalty of 5% on sales to use and practice the licensed technology to manufacture, sell and commercialise this product.


The ICMR-NIV, Pune, has isolated SARS CoV-2 virus, the inactivation of this virus isolates was standardised and will be used for development of equine antiserum. In lab experiments it was shown that these inactivated viruses produced antigens, a prequel to development of antibodies.