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Genomic Wellness Line on Wednesday, was made accessible to all the people, who wants to get it done.
Dr Vijay Chandru, Co-Founder and Director, Strand Life Sciences, pointed that this level of development and the success stories in the field of Genome-sequencing qualifies Bengaluru to be considered as the "Genome Plateau of India". He was participating in a panel discussion on 'Genomics Revolution 2.0 and Its Implications' at the 'Bengaluru Tech Summit 2022. Dr Joydeep Goswami, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Strategic Planning, Illumina Inc., emphasied on the democratisation of Genomics which is aligning countries across the world to cater to personalised medicine from diagnosis and treatment perspective. "The world today has woken up to the importance of Genomics post-Corona as displayed by the process of developing mRNA Covid-19 vaccines by Moderna and others. They were produced without any of them touching the virus itself, but only with the help of genomic technology", he remarked. He opined that Genomic profiling at birth, early screening of diseases, particularly Cancer, progress through effectiveness of monitoring and other sequencing timelines are transforming life cycles of individuals. "This cannot stop the next pandemic, however it can reduce its impact with the help of more clinical trials of the increasing number of rare diseases based on mutations and single genes coupled with newer technologies like CRISPR," Dr Goswami further mentioned. Dr Ramesh Hariharan, CEO & Co-Founder, Strand Life Sciences, explained that over the last 5-7 years there has been an increase in the ability to tease out the efforts of identifying the bioinformatics of monogenic diseases. "The window into applications of how our DNA is evolving through the blood and the opportunity of taking the monogenic effects to a larger number of Indians and working towards reducing its cost seem to be the areas of focus. There is a need to continue the unravelling of sequencing of age-related diseases as well," he said. Dr. Ramprasad V L, CEO, MedGenome Labs Ltd., touching upon the current era of Data-Biology, provided the example of RP65 Gene identified, "In Southern India that showed how a study at one part of the world and the drug for which was being developed at the US, that showcased the extent to which this field has drawn the attention of researchers." When wet labs are shrinking and dry labs are growing, it seems to be the right time for India to seize this opportunity to lead, he highlighted. (ANI)
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