Mumbai gets its first genome lab to strengthen fight against Covid

MUMBAI: When chief minister Uddhav Thackeray e-inaugurated the city’s first whole genome sequencing laboratory, he was capping three months of efforts put in by a group of doctors who graduated from the 100-year-old BMC-run Nair Hospital.

At the inauguration, Thackeray said the new lab in Nair’s affiliate Kasturba Hospital in Chinchpokli would help to quickly find mutations in the coronavirus, thereby strengthening the fight against Covid. The need for such a lab was felt during the second Covid wave when the new variant, Delta, was found in Vidarbha only during the peak; its earlier detection could have helped check its spread.

Additional commissioner Suresh Kakani said the BMC was in the process of choosing 384 samples to start the first round of sequencing in the next few days. “We have chosen four categories of Covid patients — those in hospital for a long time, those living in areas with more cases , deceased samples and those with foreign travel history,” Kakani said.

As testing each sample would cost around Rs 10,000, the BMC is being careful about picking up the samples.

Dr Jayanti Shastri, who heads the Nair Hospital microbiology department and is in charge of BMC’s genome laboratory, said: “We got two machines as donation from US company Illumina costing Rs 6.4 crore. It is the latest technology available in the world.”

Another Rs 4 crore was raised by ATE Chandra Foundation from donors such as the Gates Foundations and Godrej.

Thackeray, who also flagged off Nair Hospital’s centenary celebrations, said the BMC set up the lab without imposing a financial burden on the government but through corporate social responsibility (CSR) fund.

The Nair Hospital alumni stepped in to organise the CSR funds.

“Our alumni in Mumbai decided to do something about the fact that the city had no genome laboratory. We got in touch with one of our alumnus in Harvard Medical School, Dr Mehul Mehta, who got in touch with Illumina about a donation,” said Dr Arshad Ghulam Mohammed of the Nair Hospital alumni association.

The company agreed, and the paperwork was completed between May 11 and June 4, but the lack of cargo flights delayed the arrival of the machines from Singapore by more than a month.

So far, samples from Mumbai were sent to Centre’s INSACOG initiative, but the results were always delayed. In the interim, the state tied up with CSIR’s Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology Lab, Delhi, and the BMC carried out a pilot study with IIT Bombay.