Andrew Pollard is a central figure in the quest for a vaccine against Kofod, 19.
He's professor of paediatric infection and immunity and director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, his fellow of St Cross College,
Oxford Mountain, climb of some note, having scaled three of the major peaks in the Himalayas.
Andrew, thank you for coming today to speak on some cross coloured shorts. Thank you very much for inviting me standing.
It's been a very memorable year in so many ways. Can you remember your everyday research life within the university before Copart 19?
It's actually very hard to think of anything else other than what's going to happen today.
So it's very difficult to think back to that period when life was normal,
where my normal day was working in the children's hospital as a paediatrician, where I leave the infectious disease service.
So we look after children with infections in the hospital and then cycling from there over to the vaccine centre where I work on
vaccine development for new vaccines for children and spend a lot of time travelling around the world to our various research sites,
particularly in South Asia. All of that has completely stopped over the past year to focus completely on this virus,
which has really been messing our lives up for the last 12 months.
How much of a crunching of gears was the shift at full on covered 19 work when it happened?
It's a crunching of gears in many ways because it's, first of all, a change in direction.
But then also it's completely changed the nature of the day, which has been so intense and for such long periods.
But of course, like everyone else,
a lot of that actually been sitting in front of a computer screen looking at two dimensional people rather than the normal world I like,
which you're seeing real people in three dimensions. I started the pandemic as vice master of St Cross,
and I feel I made very little contribution to that role during 2020 and finished my term at the start of 2021.
And so have handed that on to Kevin Marsh, who's ably taken the reins.
So how did the Curve 19 work unfold?
I think if you think back to January, there was still a lot of uncertainty about whether this virus was going to actually be a big player.
But by February, it had become very apparent to at least those of us in the scientific community
that this pandemic was going to have the most enormous impact on humanity.
And of course, now, looking back today, we can see exactly how disastrous that's been for human health,
for the huge death rate that is caused around the world. But the knock on impacts on economies, on education of children,
that those problems are going to be things which we are going to continue to face beyond controlling the virus to actually come out of this bank.
So some form of normality is going to take many, many years.
So what have been the principal challenges for you and your group?
Well, I think we've had to initially tried to work out a completely different way of working.
We really were getting underway at a point where lockdown was just about to happen.
There were supply chains of all of the equipment and that we needed for running clinical trials wasn't available.
And, you know, we spent many hours on phone calls to try and find thermometer's, which suddenly became not available anywhere in Europe.
So, so many challenges in supplies that were logistical constraints.
We also had to learn how to run clinics and social distancing, which hadn't been invented at the point where we were getting underway.
So I think there were lots of new things which we hadn't experienced before. On the other hand, things like recruitment into trials.
We opened our website to ask for volunteers and within a matter of hours we had to have 10000 people wanting to take part in the trial.
So other things have been much easier than they are in normal times, the day to day for the group.
It's been the most intense period of work, seven days a week for the whole year.
Just to try to bring us to the point that where does it help to mentally and physically being a mountain climber?
Well, I think one thing from particularly climbing big mountains is that you have to work as a team.
And so that teamwork is absolutely critical. And in fact, in research and collaborative research that I do anyway,
being able to work across institutions and the different teams of people is really important.
I think the other thing which in in any pressured situation, particularly where we are,
where the pressure just doesn't go away day to day, is the stamina and the persistence that you need to keep going.
And that's been something which I think has been critical for so many of us here.
And I have to say that the pressures mentally on.
People during this last year have been intense. What have been the key milestones for you and your group?
Can you recall some specific events?
Well, I think perhaps that really getting the first doses of vaccine into people back on the 21st of April last year was a major milestone,
a huge, huge effort to get to the point where that that started.
And then I think just a couple of months later, getting trials initiated in Brazil and South Africa so that we could move to the large scale
evaluation of the vaccine to find out whether it really worked or not was incredibly important.
Perhaps the next big milestone was the first time we got to look at the data,
which was towards the end of November, and to see that the vaccine actually worked.
But, of course, the really important next milestone was to get the regulators to review all the data and get approval,
which happened at the end of January. But for me, in many ways, the most important moment was just a few weeks ago when our vaccine,
following approval from the World Health Organisation, started landing in low income countries all over the world.
The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine is a vaccine for the world.
How does the vaccine work? Well, the vaccine actually works in the same way as all other vaccines and in that they are
focussed on a protein which decorates the service of trying to boskell spike protein.
And that protein is made in our bodies so that we can make an immune response that fights
it by vaccinating people their immune system remembers it is met by protein before.
So if we do get exposed to the disease, our bodies are able to remember that previous exposure and stop the infection in instruments.
What makes it a vaccine for the world? Well, the key thing for it to be available everywhere has been that it's not for profit and
that it can be transported at frigid temperatures using the normal chain of cold.
This is develop a vaccine as normally.
And because there's been a large amount of donation from AstraZeneca to Kovacs facility, which distributes vaccines and all low income countries.
But it is not for profit in all countries. It's not just through Kovacs.
That's also for rich countries to try and make sure they're accessible everywhere.
The whole point of the partnership with AstraZeneca is you need a global pharmaceutical company to do that.
And those logistics are just astonishingly difficult. But I have had the great privilege to be involved in the local vaccination centre here
in Oxford at the Kazam Football Stadium and to see the amazing efforts of the rollout.
And I think also to see members of the public coming forward with tears in their eyes and with the
hope that having a vaccine gives to all of us to start protection against this fearful disease.
Well, I'm very pleased to have had my first vaccine, Andrew, but I guess the story doesn't end there.
Well, we've we've still got a long way to go.
I mean, the UK is doing incredibly well in providing vaccinations and walking down the ages as we are at the moment.
But there are seven billion people on the planet and there's not nearly enough doses of vaccines to go around.
And one company, one development can't do all of that.
So we've really got to continue the work with other vaccine developers to make sure that we've got enough doses for everyone who needs it.
Can I ask one further question?
Can you see your work staying on firmly on Coupet 19 into the foreseeable future, or is there something else on the horizon?
Well, I certainly hope that Kobe can get behind this before too long.
But there are important questions still to address.
We're working in a number of countries to look at the impact of the vaccines against the new variants.
I think we're reasonably confident there's going to be a substantial impact still against severe disease and death caused by new variants.
There is some concern that new variants will still able to escape some immunity and be able to transmit even if they don't cause such severe disease.
And so we are making updated vaccines as well that they're going to need testing.
Fortunately, much smaller scale than than last year. So there are certainly many months of work still to go.
Andrew Prahlad, thank you for speaking on some cross couple of shots. Great pleasure.
Thank you for inviting me.