UK develops genetic early warning system to identify new variants for future pandemics

British researchers are developing groundbreaking technology to monitor genetic changes in respiratory viruses as they circulate around the world.

Researchers at Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire, UK, are developing a groundbreaking technology to monitor genetic changes in respiratory viruses to identify dangerous new variants as they emerge and act as an early warning system for new diseases and future pandemics, The Guardian reported.
The team of researchers aims to make the technology cheap, easy to use and capable of being scaled up to provide global surveillance of a wide range of viruses. Targets would include influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), coronaviruses and previously unknown pathogens.The project, titled the Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative, aims to create a system that would deploy DNA sequencing technology to identify all viral, bacterial and fungal species in a single sample collected from a nose swab from a patient.
Ewan Harrison, who is leading the project at the Sanger Institute, a world-leading centre for genetics research and DNA sequencing, said, “Britain was at the leading edge of the genomic surveillance of Covid-19 and was responsible for about 20% of all the Sars-CoV-2 genomes that were sequenced across the planet during the pandemic.”“The knowledge and data we generated allowed us to track – with unprecedented speed and accuracy – Sars-CoV-2, the virus responsible for Covid-19, and to monitor how it was changing. It was a wonderful aid in helping to fight the disease. Now we are aiming to contribute to building global genomic surveillance for all respiratory viruses. These, after all, are the agents most likely to trigger new pandemics,” Harrison added. An illustration of the threat of future pandemics is provided by coronaviruses. The technology’s remarkable potential was revealed when researchers used genomic surveys during the Covid pandemic.In December 2020, when there was a sudden rise in Covid cases in southeast England, the technology showed that this surge had been triggered by the appearance of a new, more infectious variant. Known originally as the Kent strain, it was later relabelled the Sars-CoV-2 Alpha variant, The Guardian reported. Leader of the Sanger Institute’s genomic surveillance unit, John Sillitoe, said, “The discovery was a gamechanger. We generated genomic data very quickly and could see that this variant was transmitting at a very high rate. Suddenly, the world could see what genomics could do. It allows you to see changes in viruses much, much more quickly than by other methods, and now we are going to exploit that power.”