La Jornada – Inmegen, reference and substrate in genetic medicine: Alcocer Varela

Mexico City. Celebrating the 17th anniversary of the National Institute of Genomic Medicine (Inmegen), the Minister of Health, Jorge Alcoser Varela, has specified that the COVID-19 pandemic is still ongoing and that new viral variants are emerging.

Advances in genome sequencing can be enhanced and expanded into new environments and uses; In this mission, Inmegen is a benchmark and pillar of genomic medicine in our country, as it is on the same level as large international institutes.

Alcoser Varela noted that a better understanding of the world of emerging pathogens and their interactions in the ecosystem, and of humans and animals in a variety of climates, cultures and lifestyles, is needed in order to prevent and control epidemics.

He emphasized that the community that is part of Inmegen has the maturity and experience necessary to contribute new knowledge that contributes to meeting the challenges of genetic medicine in our country according to the highest quality standards.

He listed some of this institute’s contributions, such as the integration of the Covid-19 laboratory to detect SARS-CoV-2, approved by the Institute for Diagnostics and Epidemiological Reference (Indre), with more than 200,000 tests processed.

Similarly, 166 articles were published in 2020, of which 82 percent were in high-impact journals and 8 percent were in high-impact journals. The total number of publications that year was 25 percent higher than in the previous year.

The Genomic Diagnostics Laboratory analyzed 852 samples for the molecular diagnosis of type 1 muscular dystrophy, to classify and diagnose myelodysplastic syndromes and to identify clinically relevant fusions and somatic mutations in malignant solid tumors.

In this context, the Minister of Health highlighted the celebration of its seventeenth anniversary, which was founded in 2004 as the eleventh National Institute of Health, given the growing need to generate knowledge in the field of genomics and lead to the development of tools that improve the health of Mexicans.

In an interview, Inmegen’s general manager, Luis Alonso Herrera Montalvo, added that as of this year, Inmegen is participating in the epidemiological surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants circulating in Mexico and studying the efficacy of vaccines against the new variants.

He indicated that they will continue investigations in the coming months so that the results will eventually contribute to enhancing knowledge on the prevention and mitigation of the emerging coronavirus SARS-2, among other projects.