Dr. Renu Verma
Dr. Verma is a molecular-microbiologist with more than 11 years of experience in infectious diseases research. Her work primarily focuses on applying novel strategies to develop low-cost diagnostics for detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and SARS-CoV-2 in various sample types and environments for treatment and control of TB and COVID-19. In collaboration with Cepheid, a leading diagnostic company based in Sunnyvale California, Dr. Verma has developed a point-of-care diagnostic test which can infer the metabolism rates of anti-TB drug from a drop of blood in less than 2 and a half hours. This technology can be used to personalize anti-TB drug dosing to prevent drug-associated toxicity and treatment failure. During COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Verma was actively involved in developing qPCR-based novel technologies to detect SARS-CoV-2 in exhaled breath which was used to investigate the role of bioaerosol in COVID-19 transmission. She is also leading the whole genome sequencing work at Stanford to detect variants of interest in SARS-CoV-2. Additionally, she continues her research on developing easily accessible, low-cost diagnostics for tuberculosis with a focus on low- and middle-income-income countries where majority of the TB burden falls.
COVID-19 has impacted and changed the global research culture in big way. Scientists across the globe have united to advance knowledge on the novel coronavirus to protect humanity. Many scientists temporarily pivoted away from their original research, joining forces with immunologists and epidemiologists to offer outside-the-box perspectives.
Being in Infectious disease research working at Stanford School of Medicine, I had tremendous opportunities and access to resources to contribute towards COVID-19 research and come up with novel ideas to develop effective diagnostic tools. In my talk, I will share some of my recent work and discuss about the technologies we developed in collaboration with the Clinical Trial Unit at the Stanford Hospital. I will briefly talk about:
Development of a novel Mask sampling tool to capture and sequence SARS-CoV-2 from exhaled breath to study disease transmission and variant surveillance
I will briefly talk about the challenges we faced during the pandemic while working on SARS-CoV-2 and how we can be better prepared for the future.
Lastly, I will talk about how this rapid progress on COVID-19 research based on massive collaboration between Scientists, funders and industry partners could be replicated for other infectious diseases.