UK researchers develop warning system to detect future pandemics around the world

Researchers from the United Kingdom are developing a technology which can monitor genetic changes in viruses that circulate around the world. The system is expected to be used to detect the dangerous new variants of respiratory viruses that are emerging around the world. According to The Guardian, the system can be used to provide an early warning for new diseases to deal with future pandemics. The researchers who are working on the system are based at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire.

According to The Guardian, the researchers are planning to make the technology cheap and easy to use. They are also focussing on the scalability of the technology to provide global surveillance on deadly viruses. The project is called the Respiratory Virus and Microbiome Initiative and it will focus on viruses such as Influenza viruses, Respiratory Syncytial Viruses (RSV), coronaviruses and previously unknown pathogens. 

The technology behind it 

The researchers are planning to create a system that would deploy DNA sequencing technology which will be used to identify all viral, bacterial and fungal species in just a small sample collected from a nose swab of a person. “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,” said researcher Ewan Harrison. Harrison is currently leading the project at the Sanger Institute which is known for its research and DNA sequencing worldwide.  “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,” he added, as per the report by The Guardian. 

The Sanger team is collaborating with the UK Health Security Agency, British academics, and other public health bodies to develop the ambitious project. The researchers are also focusing on the adaptability of such systems in other laboratories around the world. However, some of the researchers are calling it a “game-changer”. “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,” John Sillitoe, leader of the Sanger Institute’s genomic surveillance unit, asserted.