Journalism of Courage
Prof Justin O’Grady, senior director of translational applications, Oxford Nanopore Technologies, United Kingdom, has made a strong case for targeted and metagenomic sequencing approaches for the detection and characterisation of tuberculosis (TB) and pneumonia.
Prof O’Grady, who was in Pune to take part in the 26th Maharashtra Chapter conference of the Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists on September 17 and 18 at BJ Government Medical College, said that his firm has been able to develop a rapid and accurate test to detect drug-resistant TB.
Initiating appropriate therapy for drug-resistant TB requires rapid and comprehensive detection of resistance, directly from patient samples (sputum or decontaminated sputum). According to a report published by Oxford Nanopore Technologies in March, targeted sequencing can provide faster and more comprehensive data that clinicians could use to identify drug resistance better than current culture and molecular methods.
He, though, admitted to concerns about the cost and skills required to use the next-generation sequencing and pointed out that it was more comprehensive than traditional tests.
Each year, an estimated 10 million TB cases and over 1.6 million deaths due to it are reported. The greatest threat to TB treatment and prevention efforts is drug-resistant TB; half a million cases of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) occur annually. Most instances of new TB cases with drug resistance occur in Russia, China and India.
Prof O’Grady, who was also a professor of medical microbiology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, spoke about the rise in antimicrobial resistance (AMR) which could cause 10 million deaths per year by 2050 unless authorities take steps to prevent this. “Microbial culture is the gold standard for the diagnosis of bacterial/fungal pathogens and AMR and takes 48 hours or longer. Hence antibiotic prescriptions are empiric and patients often receive inappropriate treatment. Rapid tools are urgently required to guide appropriate antimicrobial therapy, thereby improving patient outcomes and slowing the development of AMR,” said Prof O’Grady, whose research focuses on rapid detection and characterisation of infectious diseases.
Dr Rajesh Karyakarte, professor and head of the department of microbiology at B J Government Medical College, told The Indian Express that after two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, they were able to conduct the conference which saw the participation of experts from across the country and outside India. “Building on the hard work and the lessons learnt from the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the conference’s theme was Molecular Epidemiology,” said Karyakarte, who was elected as the president of the Maharashtra Chapter of Indian Association of Medical Microbiologists during the conference. The outgoing president Dr Neena Nagdeo gave the presidential oration.
Stalwarts in the field of genome sequencing, Dr Anurag Agarwal, ex-director, CSIR-IGIB, Delhi; Dr Sridhar Sivasubbu, senior principal scientist and head of business development, CSIR-IGIB and Dr Vinod Scaria, principal scientist, CSIR-IGIB, shared their experiences and expertise on SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance.
Dr Anup Anvikar, director, National Institute of Biologicals, New Delhi, discussed the importance of quality testing of biologicals. Dr Vinayak Kale, dean of BJGMC, Pune, was the chief guest at the conference.
A total of 56 oral papers, 31 posters and 13 case reports were presented during the conference, Dr Karyakarte said. The prestigious Late PM Khare Junior Best Research Paper Award was won by Dr Rashmita Das, BJGMC, Pune. The Late B N Joshi Award for the most outstanding paper of the conference was bagged by Dr Aishwarya Majge, LTMC, Mumbai.
