A Fife breast cancer scientist has switched to the national coronavirus effort and is helping process thousands of tests a day.
Dr Grant McGregor, from Glencraig, decided to use his skills to help set up a major testing facility in Glasgow when cancer research labs were closed across the country due to the pandemic.
The 31-year-old, who normally works at the city’s Beatson Institute, was one of the first six scientist volunteers tasked with setting up the new site at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in just three weeks.
He is now one of around 100 working on processing covid-19 tests coming in from across the country.
The hospital site, known as the Lighthouse Laboratory, is part of the biggest network of diagnostic testing facilities in British history and Grant and his colleagues carry out all their work in full PPE.
“I worked on improving some of the automation in the lab, which will hopefully help us get closer to the government testing targets,” he said.
“Research on cancer is still our priority but the virus must be tackled too.
“By helping the global effort to tackle covid-19, we hope we can get back to beating cancer as soon as possible.”
Grant and the team have set up an efficient “production line” for processing samples, unpacking the nose and throat swabs, transferring samples from the swabs, extracting genetic material and then analysing it on specialist equipment donated by the Beatson Institute.
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely affected the work of cancer researchers across the country as a result of social distancing measures to reduce the spread of the virus.
Universities have partially closed, laboratories have wound down their activities and experiments have stopped.
While many researchers continue to work productively from home by writing papers, analysing data, pulling together collaborations, reading literature and generating ideas, some scientists, like Grant, have volunteered to work at covid testing hubs across the UK and apply their expert knowledge to help with technical work and analysis.
Around a quarter of the scientist volunteers carrying out testing at the Glasgow Lighthouse Laboratory are from the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute.
