COVID Megalab To Boost Testing Infrastructure As UK Prepares For Future Diagnostic Needs

COVID Megalab To Boost Testing Infrastructure As UK Prepares For Future Diagnostic Needs

Source : Medtech Insight

A new “megalab” that will be able to process and sequence “hundreds of thousands” of COVID-19 samples a day has been opened in Royal Leamington Spa, UK. Its genotype assay testing capabilities will be used for rapid detection of variants of concern and new mutations.

The lab, named after UK researcher Rosalind Franklin who 70 years ago was pivotal in helping discover the atomic arrangement of DNA, will play a key role in the national COVID Test and Trace efforts as society reopens after lockdown, the UK government said on 13 July.

The news came on the day that UK positive COVID cases once again topped 36,600, reaching levels last seen on 20 January, when the UK’s second spike was on a downwards trend.

The laboratory, using robotic capabilities, will employ LGC (Bioresearch Technologies)’s ultra-high throughput PCR Nexar workflows. These enable a processing capacity of up to 150,000 tests a day on a single workflow, which LGC claims to be the highest PCR testing capacity per system worldwide.

LGC’s PCR technology has been in use at the COVID Lighthouse Lab in Milton Keynes, UK, since January to indicate whether positive test samples contain known variants. The new megalab will also sequence genomes to confirm known variants and identify any new mutations.

To date, the UK has genomically sequenced over 600,000 positive COVID-19 tests. It has conducted more than 200 million COVID-19 tests, over half of which have been PCR tests. NHS Test and Trace has contacted over 4.8 million positive individuals and instructed them to self-isolate.

Managing the spread of COVID-19 in the months ahead is the main task of the new UK Health Security Agency (HSA), which will start up in October. Until then, its work will be supported by Public Health England (PHE) and NHS Test and Trace.

Led by former UK deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries, HSA will monitor both COVID and future infectious disease threats, and will contribute to global health security.

It will use the New Variant Assessment Platform (NVAP) to increase the UK’s genomic capabilities to respond to emerging threats. It will also work to slow the growth of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) through delivery of the UK’s five-year action plan on AMR.

PHE has identified the first group of countries to receive COVID-19 genomic sequencing support under NVAP as: Brazil, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and Pakistan. Collaborations with Singapore and the African Centre for Disease Control (Ethiopia) are expected to follow.

By Ashley Yeo