Government Develops Framework To Ensure Microbiology Labs Have Essential Supplies

Public Health England, in conjunction with the UK Health Security Agency and the microbiology sector of life sciences, has created a framework that is aimed at building up resilience to future viral and bacteriological threats.

This framework, as supported by the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health and Social Care, aims to provide access to sample analysis scientific equipment, diagnostics tools and research and development for various infectious disease studies.

It has been opened to all academic, charitable and public sector bodies and has been split into four primary funding segments;

• Diagnostic services, equipment and consumables
• Equipment, consumables and services for research and development
• Commercialisation, product development and manufacturing
• Diagnostic testing

The third section in particular highlights that the scheme is aimed not simply at research but at life science consulting and marketing that can turn medical discoveries into products and focuses on the entire development cycle of a medical product.

The final stage is aimed at improving collaboration between private and public sector clinical laboratories and allows for greater testing capacity to be made available as and when it is required.

In total, 170 supplies are involved and access to the framework provides access to these suppliers.

The need for expanding testing capacity has been seen through the rapid development of a vaccine for Covid-19 over the past year, and the trials and studies that have taken place since then to confirm the efficacy and safety of the vaccine.

According to PHE data, the vaccination programme has prevented 13,000 deaths from its launch at the end of 2020 up until 9th May 2021, with every person in the country expected to have been offered a vaccine by July.

The current testing platform has also provided information on how effective the vaccine is against variant strains, with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccination being 88 per cent effective compared to its 93 per cent effectiveness against the most dominant strain in the UK.

This framework follows up on the initial Public Health England Microbiology Framework that was launched in 2016 and follows other funding and grant drives in the life sciences sector.

The head of scientific procurement, Nilesh Pattani, was particularly keen to stress the importance of Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS), a process of determining the entire DNA sequence of a person or organism in a single scan.

This can, in turn, be used for diagnostic purposes and can be used to spot and prevent diseases from progressing significantly.

Microbiology is a grouping of various different disciplines involving microbes and microorganisms. Along with bacteria and viruses, it also includes fungi, algae and protozoa, and is focused on how to diagnose, prevent and treat diseases that spread via microbes.

The primary technique used in microbiology is polymerase chain reaction tests (PCR), which is one of the two main technologies used to diagnose Covid-19, alongside the much faster lateral flow tests that have come onto the market more recently.

These developments highlight the importance of the life sciences sector in general and microbiology in particular, as well as the Government’s interest in ensuring life sciences research is as accessible as possible.