CCMB to lead consortium to identify COVID variants

Eight national labs to develop strategies to identify ‘variants of concern’ before they spread widely

A consortium of four city clusters – Bangalore, Hyderabad, New Delhi and Pune – has been established with eight national labs to upscale SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus genomic surveillance and to complement the national efforts led by INSACOG - Indian SARS-CoV​-2 Genomics Consortium on Thursday. Led by Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad, the consortium currently includes different partners in three other cities: National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bengaluru - Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai; Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (InStem-Department of Biotechnology (DBT) - National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru; CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology - IGIB in New Delhi; Pune Knowledge Cluster, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISECR), Pune and CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory in Pune. Advisor at CCMB Rakesh Mishra will lead these efforts along with Prof. Satyajit Mayor of NCBS, Prof L.S. Shashidhara, Pune Knowledge Cluster and Dr Anurag Agrawal, CSIR-IGIB. “Our aim is to develop strategies and capabilities to identify ‘variants of concern’ before they spread widely and cause outbreaks. This will also help correlate with clinical symptoms and disease severity, potentially associated with emerging variants,” said the team, in an official press release.