Hyderabad: Hyderabad is presently part of a consortium of four city clusters formed to improve Coronavirus genomic monitoring (SARS-CoV-2). Bengaluru, New Delhi, and Pune are the other three cities in the consortium. The partnership will be directed by the Hyderabad-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), which received support and startup financing from The Rockefeller Foundation.

According to a press release published by the CCMB on Thursday, "The new effort will track the emergence of viral variants correlated to epidemiological dynamics and clinical outcomes. The consortium aims to develop targeted sampling strategies based on granular epidemiological and clinical data. Coupled with intense environmental surveillance and advanced computational techniques, the consortium would also focus on building capabilities for real-time surveillance and epidemiology."

Apart from the CCMB, the consortium includes NCBS-TIFR, InStem-DBT, and NIMHANS in Bengaluru, CSIR-IGIB in New Delhi, Pune Knowledge Cluster, IISER-Pune, and CSIR-NCL in Pune, as well as other leading research institutes in the nation.

The consortium will collaborate with local governments, hospitals, and physicians, as well as with the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium, which is run by the Indian government (INSACOG). It will work to extend the establishment to other strategic locations in India in the future.

Dr. Rakesh Mishra, a former director of the CCMB and currently its advisor, will lead the consortium of the four city clusters, which will also include Prof Satyajit Mayor of NCBS, Prof LS Shashidhara of Pune Knowledge Cluster, and Dr. Anurag Agrawal of IGIB.

The team's goal, according to the news release, 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."

Consortium to collaborate with local authorities: The consortium will collaborate with local governments, hospitals, and physicians, as well as the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium of the Indian government (INSACOG).