By Chioma Obinna

The Nigerian Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) on Thursday launched a new set of Hepatitis B Virus, (HBV) test kits that quantifies the viral load of HBV in plasma samples from patients.

The new NIMR kit which is polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) also detects and quantifies all genotypes of HBV circulating in the environment for the detection of HBV, was also designed by Joseph Shaibu, a molecular virologist at NIMR.

The NIMR HBV qPCR kit 1.0 was validated using the quant-studio platform and the test is based on specimen preparation of isolate viral DNA and qPCR amplification

Unveiling the projects in Lagos the Minister of Health and Social Welfare, Dr Tunji Alausa while on a working visit to the institute said Nigeria needs Centres like the NIMR’s Centre for Human Virology and Genomics to improve public health, sovereignty, and care.

Encouraging the institute to collaborate with the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, as the move along with the centre’s operation, he said the commissioning of the centre and the HBV kits confirmed the creative ingenuity of Nigeria researchers.

He said that with the kit that can detect HBV and compared to that of Roche, which makes it internationally acceptable with a specificity of almost 100 percent, NIMR needs to commercialise the kit.

He said Nigeria have a Hepatitis B virus prevalence of over 13.3 per cent and that translates to millions of people that are out there that can benefit from the cheaper alternative.

“So NIMR should develop a strong commercialisation plan. You mentioned bottlenecks with approval. Please send me a memo detailing these issues. I will ensure they expedite their approval process. If you meet all regulatory requirements, you will have approval within 90 days. Thank you to the researchers for their contributions to this and all their ongoing work.”

He urged the researchers to use the hepatitis B commissioned PCR kit as a guinea pig, you’re going to now develop an aggressive commercialisation plan for all the things you’re working on, and you’re going to be working on into the future.
“Now, to the DG, he’s leaving, but he’s leaving behind a team of very talented researchers that will continue to move this institution along. I’m going to challenge you to double your efforts and focus more on other areas, do more research, vaccine research, test kit research, and disease surveillance. Please return your efforts, and redirect your efforts in these areas of need. Any research that you do in this area that leads to development will benefit our country,” he added.

He said they are working on getting a memo to the Federal government on how the Nigerian government would fund research.

He said the commissioning of the Centre for Human Virology and Genomics reflected the environment that the current government has created.

He said the centre would be doing a lot of state-of-the-art diagnostic genomics testing, HIV genomic studies, hepatitis B, hepatitis C and all these can be compared to anything you see in the developed world.

Earlier, the Director-General of NIMR, Prof Babatunde Salako who announced that his tenure was rounding off, said the institute has robust intramural and extramural research programmes organised within the major areas of HIV/AIDS, TB, malaria, maternal and child health, non-communicable diseases, neglected tropical diseases, reproductive health and oncology, clinical trials, vaccinology and diagnostics kits development.

Salako said within the past decade NIMR has received external grants from several organisations and has contributed significantly to the policy development in the areas of malaria, HIV and TB control in Nigeria working with the federal ministry of health and some state ministries of health.

He said under his watch, NIMR acquired several world-class equipment through which it was able to sequence the index case of COVID-19 disease in Nigeria and provide the first genetic architecture of the virus in Africa, “this brought recognition and commendation for the institute and launched the institution into the world of innovation”

“NIMR scientists went on to develop a DNA & RNA extraction kit and further developed two COVID-19 test kits. Encouraged by these successes our scientists also developed test kits for Yellow Fever, Lassa Fever and Monkey Pox, thus enhancing the country’s ability to improve case detection of these diseases that have over the years ravaged our population.”

Salako said over the past 8 years NIMR has been involved in several ground-breaking researches nationally and internationally and has contributed in several ways to improve our health system, especially in the area of policy briefs and training of the different categories of health workforce.

He said their outstanding performance and contributions to science and nation-building were recently confirmed by the visit of the American Secretary of State Mr. Antony Blinken, who commended the institution and the country in tackling public health threats and on the progress made on HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 control.

Earlier, the designer of the HBV kit, a molecular virologist at NIMR, Joseph Shaibu explained further that the in-house kit was developed to bridge the gap created by the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown that cut off their supply during the period and was cheaper than the Roche kit which is the gold standard.

He said the benefits of the new kit include; availability, cheaper and designed n by incorporating sequences from Nigeria.