After?India¡¯s Serum Institute announced that it was going to start manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines that are currently in trial at Oxford University, and sell them for Rs 1,000 in September, if everything goes according to plan and human trials are successful, there seems to be a hint of optimism against the eventual end of COVID-19 pandemic.
The Oxford COVID-19 vaccine has also been backed by the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) and they¡¯re closely monitoring the progress for the ChAdOx1 adenovirus vaccine.?
Suffice to say, all of this wouldn't have been possible without the hard work and ceaseless effort of Sarah Catherine Gilbert, a vaccinologist and a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, and her team of researchers who're working towards ending the COVID-19 pandemic.
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She¡¯s completed her schooling from Kettering High School where she had the revelation of wanting to work in the field of medicine. She graduated with a Bachelor¡¯s Degree in Biological Sciences from the University of East Anglia. Later she completed her doctoral degree from the University of Hull where she looked at the genetics and biochemistry of yeast Rhodospordium toruloides.?
She¡¯s worked with numerous institutions such as the Brewing Industry Research Foundation, Leicester Biocentre. She has also been a professor at the Jenner Institute in 2010. She¡¯s been working with novel influenza vaccinations, specifically the development and preclinical testing of viral vaccinations. She was also involved in the development of the universal flu vaccine that triggered the immune system to create T cells that specifically affect influenza.?
She, along with her team started working on the vaccine as soon as China released the full genome sequence of COVID-19 (on January 10). She implemented her research for the adenoviral vector ChAdOx1 that has already been proven successfully against MERS coronavirus (that wreaked havoc in the Middle East) in mice.
Researchers have also tested this vector to create vaccines against Nipah virus which showed success in hamsters but never got a chance to get to human trials.?
In COVID-19 however, she is using the adenoviral vector to stimulate an immune response against the COVID-19 spike protein. She is developing the vaccine alongside Andrey Pollard, Teresa Lambe, Catherine Green, Sandy Douglas and Adrian Hill.?
What started in January, in nearly over three months the vaccine is currently being trialled on humans. The first phase of trials involve 550 participants and will be given the vaccine dubbed ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, whereas 550 others are given a control vaccine against meningitis and sepsis for comparison.?
Professor Gilbert has mentioned in the past that said she was 80 per cent confident of the vaccine's success, stating, ¡°Personally, I have a high degree of confidence. This is my view, because I've worked with this technology a lot, and I've worked on the MERS vaccine trials, and I've seen what that can do.¡±
There are as many as 70 vaccines under development to fight COVID-19 around the world, but the Oxford vaccine that Sarah Gilbert worked on is holding the most promise as of now. She expects if everything goes well, we could have a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as September this year. For the sake of entire humanity, let's hope her prediction comes right.