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Okay. So can you just give me your name and your title?

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So I'm Richard Cornel. I'm the Nutty Professor of clinical medicine and head of the Department of Medicine.

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Okay, so without telling me your whole life story, can you just give me a sort of the headlines of how you got to where you are now?

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Yeah. So, uh, so I'm from the Isle of Wight, so I went to a local school in the Isle of Wight.

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And, um, then when I was 18, I went to medical school in Cambridge.

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I went to Trinity College, Cambridge.

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Um, and then from uh, Cambridge I came across to Oxford, um, and I was at Baylor College here for three years as a clinical student.

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Once I qualified, um, I worked here, um, in this attached actually the same department to David Weatherill as a houseman.

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And then I went to the junior medical jobs in London, and then I came back here and did a Ph.D. in Dphil in in genetics, in the genetics of diabetes.

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And that then persuaded me to become an immunologist.

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So I, after I'd been back in London for another couple of years, um, training at Hammersmith as a,

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as a doctor in general in renal medicine, I went to Stanford and I was a, um, something staffer for a few years working in the laboratory.

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Chris Goodenough So was that a purely research post or theory?

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I wasn't doing medicine, and then I came back here.

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I was funded to do that by the Wellcome Trust.

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Then I came back here and I um, and I finished my clinical training, became a consultant, an honorary consultant on the religion.

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And, um, and then I became a welcome senior fellow clinical fellow in the department with an interest in autoimmune diseases.

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And you know why the, the body doesn't attack itself.

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You know what controls friendly fire.

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So, yeah, so let's just unpack that a little bit more because you said earlier that that doing or developing diabetes meant becoming an immunologist.

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So for the benefit of people who don't know. Yes. Why what has diabetes got to do with immunology?

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So the thought of diabetes, I was interested in my my supervisor with John Jonathon was interdependent type one diabetes,

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which is a disease typically in young people where the body's immune system destroys the the

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beta cells in the pancreas that produces the and as a result you're not producing any insulin.

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And and so you've become diabetic and you can't control your blood glucose levels.

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And so I was interested then in the in how in the genetics of that.

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And we had a kind of fairly simple idea that there would be relatively few genes causing this.

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And so we were modelling this and it turned out by the time I'd finished the three years that,

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that it was clear that there were lots of genes involved in making people susceptible to to diabetes.

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And it seemed to be a very complicated problem.

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And so I decided that rather than studying the genes, I would like to study the mechanisms that that causes.

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I thought that would be a better way to understand autoimmune disease.

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And to do that, I needed to move from genetics to understanding the immunology and, if you like, the pathology of the disease.

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And so that's why I went to to Stanford to train in immunology.

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And then when I came back,

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I tried to combine the two bits to make models of of autoimmune diseases and the pathways involved in those and study them using immunology.

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And so I continued that. I basically continued that through.

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And I still I'm still working on that, on that problem. And, you know, I've become a bit more translational as the time has gone by.

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So, um, and now, uh, or recently with Simon Davis is a colleague of mine.

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We've, we've, we've started to create new drugs that might, we think, ameliorate some of these diseases.

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We, we started a company to make that happen. And yeah.

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So what of the mode of action of those drugs?

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Well, so, so one of the big discoveries in medicine in the last ten years has been the the way

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in which you can treat cancer by blocking receptors called checkpoint receptors.

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And this has transformed some cancers like uh, um, malignant melanoma for subpopulation of people.

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It can be curative for people even with widespread disease.

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Um, and so the way in which those work is that these receptors are on white blood cells and they interact with, um, uh, uh, receptors that are on our.

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Issues which are basically a kind of not eat, don't eat me, don't destroy me, signal on our own cells.

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And when they interact with the receptors on the white blood cells, they give a signal to the white blood cells to turn them off.

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And cancers expresses the the the proteins that bind these receptors and white blood cells in abundance.

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And so if you so it was discovered that and this won the Nobel Prize.

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If you block those those interactions with an antibody, so just disrupt those interactions,

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then the white blood cells no longer get the signal to be inactivated. They get activated and then they can kill the cancer.

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And that's how this checkpoint antagonism works.

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And so that's very exciting in that it really transformed the way we think about cancer.

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So what we thought was Simon Davis and I was I mean, it's really an idea that came from Simons.

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This is really his idea that if you were to activate those inhibitory receptors with antibodies,

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you could kind of do the opposite and you could actually mimic the cell,

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the the proteins on your cells and turn off the white blood cells therapeutically.

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And that would be useful in inflammatory diseases or autoimmune diseases,

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because you could take somebody who's got an autoimmune disease and you could just tickle the immune system into a new state of slight inactivity,

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which might then prevent getting the disease. Because at the moment,

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the way we treat these autoimmune diseases is we we give them pretty much blunderbuss treatments

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that turn off all the immune response and that that makes them very susceptible to infection.

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So we want more refined and specific treatments.

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And one of the interesting things about these these protein protein interactions with the checkpoint is that that

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there are around about 70 of these different receptors and they're distributed in different tissues and so on.

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So there might be possible there could be quite like that you'd be able to turn off.

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If this works, you'll be able to turn off specific responses in different tissues.

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And so, so yeah. So it's a, it's a wonderful array of potential targets.

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And so we've been trying to work on that. But that's really the, the, the product of all these years of working on different models.

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Um, so in the case of the collaboration with Simon, he's the sort of, he,

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he is the originator of this idea of working on proteins and in my lab has the models in order to develop the ideas.

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And so that's how we have, we've got to where we are and by more consuming lab based lab based models and mouse models.

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Yeah.

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Well, so that you mentioned in your title at the beginning that you also had a department of this department and of the Department of Medicine is,

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I read, the largest department of medicine in Europe.

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What made you given that you had such a busy and productive research career, decided you wanted to step into an administrative role like that?

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Well, I started taking on different administrative roles before this.

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I, um, I've been director of graduate studies and then I was the deputy head of the division.

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Um, and, and I, you know, enjoyed that.

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I mean, one of the things that I really like is I really love other, you know, discovering about other people's research,

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you know, the, you know, the problem with your, the problem with being a, uh,

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in a principal investigator in your own lab is that you can quite easily become, feel limited as time has gone by,

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you know, become much more interested in collaborating with other people and doing more and more things.

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Um, and so, uh, it seemed a kind of natural progression to sort of be the easiest way to get involved with more other activity is to take other roles.

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And, you know, the being, the number of professor of medicine is just a fantastic opportunity to interact with a whole lot of people.

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I don't know that we're necessarily the biggest department. I mean, we're probably the biggest department by research income.

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I mean, we have, um, we have around about, uh, probably around about $1,000,000,000 of Grant Holdings, which is,

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which is big for a department, it's not for company, but so it's because most of those will be rolling over a five year period.

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And we have a research income now, which is around about £220 million a year.

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And it's growing a lot, you know, and when I, I became a professor in 2019, you know, before the pandemic, not long before the pandemic in July 2019.

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And, and, um, you know, I see that Peter Ratcliffe was the last one.

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And at that point I think our income's about 150 million a year.

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So. So the department's growing a lot. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's certainly the, the department which has the,

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the biggest global projection, I think, of any Department of Medicine in the world.

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Yeah. I was going to ask you what? Kind of range of things. Does it include?

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I mean, there are some as you say, it's part of the medical sciences division, which has other departments in it.

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Yes, but the Department of Medicine by itself has got lots and lots and lots of different units that cover quite a wide range.

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Can you can you just give me some sense of the breadth?

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Yes. So, I mean, the the we went to 16 departments, but just happened to be the biggest department in the university.

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I mean, the the breadth is both in the clinical kind of specialities that we cover.

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That's a that's a very traditional way of looking at the department for the breadth is

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also in the range of research activities from basic research through to clinical trials.

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So you can look at it both ways. So we do very fundamental research and we do clinical trials and develop drugs.

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And on the clinical side, we cover specialities that range from respiratory medicine, renal medicine,

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gastrointestinal medicine, general medicine, infectious diseases is one of the things we're most famous for.

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And as part of that is, is tropical medicine, which, um, you know,

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has been one of the distinctive features of the department since Sir David Weatherall was another

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professor of medicine and established these overseas units in the overseas units in in the 1980s,

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essentially four or five. There are there are there are three main units, one in a in in Kenya, one in Thailand and one in Vietnam.

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But then they have subsidiary units which are also fully staffed by A&M Oxford staff in, in Indonesia, uh, in Lao in Cambodia, um, Nepal, um,

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we even have a unit in Myanmar, um, and we have other units in that that are, we have one, we even have one in the, in the, in the, in Kinshasa.

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And uh, and we have a unit in, in Bangladesh has a lot of activity from those units and we have around about 2000 staff associated with those.

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And, and somewhere around about, uh, one and a half thousand staff in Oxford.

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So you can see the preponderance of activities very is both, um, and we,

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we have around about 150, I think 153 research collaborations with separate overseas countries.

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So in addition to that, there's just a lot of other activity.

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Um, and the other thing that I think is distinct about that is that each of those overseas collaborations is a partnership with,

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with some other organisation entities.

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So for example, in, in Kenya, we, our partnership is with the Kenyan Medical Research Institute,

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which is a government run organisation for medical research in Kenya,

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in, uh, in Thailand our collaboration is with Marriott, all the university that's a principal collaboration.

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And then in Vietnam our collaboration is one with, um, a hospital for infectious diseases, um, so, you know, essentially a government run hospital.

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And so each of those is, you know, some sort of collaboration. We don't we don't in the department do a clinical delivery.

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Well, pretty much not. We do a little bit, I must say, in on the the border with with Myanmar, where we where the Korean are.

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And we we do both research there and there is a bit of a clinical delivery, um, which, which we kind of manage.

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But the general principle is we don't do that, we, we collaborate with the NHS or other health care delivery organisations.

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I think that's a really important point actually.

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Um, so we do support the teaching, the medical students and we do our research and our teaching elsewhere.

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Um, but we're not directly involved in, we partner up and we also partner of course with a lot of other organisations,

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including commercial organisations and advise governments and so on.

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So there's just a huge amount of activity. The number of prison department imprints for investigators is, is around about 200.

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Um, I don't think that seems like a large number or not, but for me it doesn't feel like a large number because I,

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you know, I know pretty much I know many of them very well.

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I know all of them. Um, and so the department is divided up into institutes, centres and units.

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Um, and so the overseas would be separate units in the department.

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And then we have a series of units in Oxford and uh, they, they each have a.

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Director. But but my sense of the department is that it's quite a flat structure that and I think

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this is typical of the university as a whole that we we we are not terribly hierarchical.

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I mean, I don't think that would ever be tolerated in Oxford. It was quite devolved anyway.

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It is. Well, the devolution is another important thing about the way in which we operate.

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And in talking about the pandemic, that becomes really important because speed of action depends on on,

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you know, your loyalty to acting and having that devolved.

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And one of the most important things and things that distinguishes us from other universities, for example,

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Cambridge, is that the overheads from the grants, which is essentially what we depend upon for India,

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95% of our income comes from research that that's very atypical from a medical

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department because most of the medical device rely very heavily on teaching income,

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but also just 5%. And, and so the money that we, we can deploy in support of activities comes from the overheads, from our grant.

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And what happens in many universities is those overheads are absorbed to the centre

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and then the departments apply for a budget each year against the strategic targets.

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What happens in Oxford is that the money flows to the department and then we decide on the

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strategy directly directing the central university charges for our utilities and other things.

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And so that gives us the flexibility to decide what our strategy is.

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And we're not always being pushed back by central concerns or the other,

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but it's the eat what you kill principle that Sir John Bell you know he was also so so

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last but one national Christmas with John Bell before he became the richest professor.

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And I think he was kind of really responsible for the eat what you kill principle, which is which is actually is really important.

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John's done a lot of great things for the university, but I think almost his most important contribution is that because it means that we, you know,

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we're able to respond quickly and we don't have to go through some central hierarchy with the with people who don't understand the science.

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So when that happens, the the strategic imperatives are not driven by the scientific or in our case, the, you know, the medical need as we see it.

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It's it's driven by well, often just by the need to balance the budgets, you know, and competing interests from other departments.

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I mean, we still have to balance the budget. And if you're a deficit department, it doesn't help you for the for this department,

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because we keep on growing and generating more things then and taking risks.

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We were able to continue to grow our income and it enables you to take risks.

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So if you, if you have a, um, in order to grow and be successful, you've got to take risks.

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And this system in Oxford allows you to take some risks, and that's important.

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And that also played out in the pandemic.

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We took risks in order to support things, um, which, which, which, if we had to refer, we would never have been able to do so.

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Yeah, that's right. We're just coming to that. So we finally got to due to the pandemic.

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So, I mean, you were obviously extremely well placed to be alert to what was going on in China.

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Just tell me the story of how you first heard about it and and how the department very quickly became involved.

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Yes. So. One of the we were all we were all somewhat aware of it, I think, in early January, some more than others.

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Um, the, the, the key thing for me was, was I saw it, which is, you know,

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an organisation that was originally set up by can be fairer with Peter Horby and

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perhaps to spell that out I have interviewed Peter so I've got it somewhere.

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Yes. So, yes.

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So I. Sarich is the international Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium.

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That's it. And yeah, and it was founded around 2009, thereabouts, by Jeremy and Peter.

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Peter Horby then became its director when Jeremy moved to the to the Wellcome Trust.

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Peter's an interesting person in that he was, um, when Jeremy was the director of the, our unit in, in Ho Chi Minh City.

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Peter was a director of a sort of subsidiary unit in, in Hanoi.

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And Peter had, uh, had worked on the first pandemic, and he'd also worked on bird flu.

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And, um, and so he, he had this long interested in pandemics.

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It came in, so he became Director Vasari. I saw that notion around.

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I saw Eric, which was a a collaboration of people in multiple countries,

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was to develop pre-pandemic preparedness and to and so when it when a pandemic struck,

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you wouldn't be able to put in place the the the protocols, the governance, the trials and everything else.

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And so you needed to have that ready to go.

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And so when the when the the the current pandemic, the current source of virus hit Wuhan, that they started using the SA protocol straightaway.

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And so Peter, the director of our site, was very closely connected with them.

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And in fact the first publication that came out of, um, on the, on the, uh, on the new virus, what were, you know, the publication use the protocols.

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And the first review involved. Peter was a co-author of the first review.

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So he was, you know, had that, that entry point from Peter.

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And so I think it was around about it was it was around about the 20th of January or something like that that Peter came and said,

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you know, it's just not going away. It's escaped. And so we needed to take some action.

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And so that's when we, that's when I kicked off the, the, um, meetings, you know,

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in the department and I, and of course I involved other departments as well.

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But we had a meeting on the 30th of, of, of January.

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Um, and just yes, I'd like to know more about that meeting.

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Yeah. Everybody I've interviewed has mentioned it. So. So who, who did you invite?

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So, um, it wasn't a very big group.

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The people who went. Where did it take place? It took out all this stuff. Yes.

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Okay. So so I wrote to everybody on the 20th of January, I think,

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asking everybody to come or a group of people to come together to to work out coordination, resources and, you know, communication.

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And, you know, what we were going to do, um, and, uh,

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and so the meeting was held in the conference room at the Welcome Centre for Human Genetics and at the, the, the,

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at the meeting we had Peter Horby who was going to tell us about had trials and W.H.O. and database and so we had Sara Gilbert,

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um, Alan Townsend, um, has long interested in vaccines, you know,

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Alan probably Guy Thwaites, who's the director of the unit in Vietnam, he was over here, so,

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so he came along and Derek Crook and Tim Peto, who were both in the NDA but also practising in the hospital,

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came to talk us about, um, you know, preparedness within the hospital at that time because,

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you know, there wasn't any nothing, there'd be no action in the UK.

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And we had Dave Stewart and Yvonne Gaines from Structural Biology at Tao Dong.

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You also had connections with China, um, Christoph Fraser and John Todt, because we knew they were interested in pathogen sequencing.

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Christoph Fraser had done a lot of pathogen sequencing for HIV in Africa, so he had a pretty than that.

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And then Gavin Scruton, who's at the Medical Sciences Division, came and John Bell came to that meeting.

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And I think we, we, we had other people from the divisional office later with the, there, um, um, and.

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I think Alison Brindle was there from, um, from, um, from divisional comms.

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Anyway, we, we met and um, Chris McIntyre was also there from the comms team.

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So we met and we just had an hours meeting and just one hour and just whittled through,

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um, uh, the status quo, you know, where we were at and what we could do forward.

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And I might the, the, the things that were key,

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I think at that meeting that came out of that meeting was the were to first of all, Sarah told us that she'd been staff.

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We knew Sarah had been working on the, on the, the nurse, uh, vaccine.

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And so she told us that she'd got, that she got, uh, a, you know,

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a prototype vaccine for this underway, she and Teresa LAMB But, but it was her really driving it.

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Theresa LAMB was also in India at that time. She's actually next post-doc of mine.

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And so, um, and so, um, so they, they'd got that underway, but they didn't.

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The key thing was they didn't have any, um, they needed to, they hadn't got any funding from Cepi.

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So Cepi had had had funded protein and RNA and, and a viral vaccine.

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I think they had three come across cepi before, but we should just spell that again now.

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It's like, you know, the Coalition for Epidemic.

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No, um, excuse me. For something else. I'm sorry.

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I'm. I'm blanking, too. Um, this is where we need to pause.

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Never mind. I we have talked about setting a lot in the past years.

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Other people. So I do have it. I have a notebook somewhere. Yeah, I'm embarrassing.

238
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Anyway, anyway, he had not. It's a anyway it's a body that funds vaccines.

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Exactly. Yes. And so and so. So Cepi had not funded areas, in fact she had no she had no funding for so her vaccine.

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And so we but she needed to to fund she needed to fund the the the she needed to get manufacturing in line.

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And there was a there was a big concern that, that we wouldn't be able to get, um, the way everybody was wanting manufacturing capacity.

242
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And so she wanted to fund it.

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She needed to sign an agreement with a company called Advent, which was in Italy, and that was going to cost you £1,000,000 to sign the deal.

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Um, and so we were kind of confident as a group that we would be able to, um, that she would be able to get funding down the line.

245
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But we needed to keep the step so that one of the key actions was we agreed that she

246
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should have £1,000,000 of funding from the department to to underwrite the contract.

247
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So that was it. That was one of the key decisions. Um, of course, you know, we, that money came back later because we got funding.

248
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So, but, but that's an example I think junior of how that, that we were to take action quickly.

249
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Um and so the second thing that, that we did on that meeting was we knew that um, that the de Stuart told us that the,

250
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the, the National Synchrotron, the, for looking at the protein structures in China was being maintained.

251
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So they didn't have that capacity.

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So he, he turned over a diamond to looking at the structures from the virus in collaboration with his longstanding collaborators of people in China.

253
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And so we were getting the sequences now. I mean, it's very different from the first source because from my perspective, you know,

254
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the Chinese were very open about this and they were communicating with the world very rapidly.

255
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Um, in fact, the head of the China CDC at the time Centre for Disease Control Account was George GAO, you know, who's a former student.

256
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Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I used to share a I used to share an office with George GAO back in the day.

257
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And, and so he was when the data was flowing.

258
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And so we were able to make the proteins and what they was and then they were running those on Diamond.

259
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So those are two kind of strategic decisions at that meeting and and not much else was going on anyway.

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I mean, we were a bit, you know, we were we were a bit perplexed.

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I mean, I wrote straight one of the other things that was I was I wrote to Jeremy Ferrer after the meeting,

262
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uh, you know, he said, Oh yeah, we, the welcomes on the case. But actually there was no funding coming from anywhere at that time.

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Um, and yeah, so that's how we kicked it off.

264
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And then we agreed that we would have weekly meetings. So, um, we had, we had a meeting in a week's time and, and then those meetings continued.

265
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Um, I mean, I mean this for a year, I think after a year I stopped caring them and.

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At that point, Peter Horby took over because at that point we decided we needed to make something more sustainable in pandemic sciences.

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And it seemed right. But at the peak, we were getting sort of 50 people or so, and they were to our meetings once a week.

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They were fantastic, actually, the collaboration, because it brought everybody together.

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And so that was a small nucleus.

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But then they grew to yeah. And uh, yeah, that was, um, that was a high point for me, those meetings.

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And after the meetings, you know, came a whole series of, a whole series of joint activities.

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So we had, um. I mean, we had, uh, I mean, we had the vaccine, um, and quite rapidly we pulled in 90, pulled out because we did the trials.

273
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Um, so he, he, he, I mean, he, he let that be.

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Sara said that the vaccine thing, you know, I think that went, um, we, of course, we were involved in, in the, the planning for the manufacturing.

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But it kind quick, quickly became clear to me that we were never going to be able to, to do that.

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I mean, not at the scale. I mean, at the Sandy Douglas, he's one of the junior investigators.

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He he did a fantastic job putting that together and that that then translate was transferred to AstraZeneca.

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So they had a huge advantage because he put all the the core manufacturing in place.

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And and we're one of the I mean, this was on top of our own clinical BIOMANUFACTURING facility, which was being run by Cath Green.

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It must have. I've interviewed Cath and Sandy and and Carina Jo.

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Yeah. So, so and I, they were lined up.

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I mean they're all really special people and they just did a fantastic job.

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So, um, you know, the clinical biomanufacturing facility, you know, that played a very special part in getting things underway for us.

284
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So. Yeah. So the, the vaccine thing was, was going very well.

285
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There were, um. It soon became clear, though, that we wouldn't have the capacity, I think,

286
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to do it and that that out of that came that the negotiations with AstraZeneca.

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And were you involved in. No, I wasn't directly involved in those. John Bell really led those.

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So I was very peripheral to the negotiations.

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What I was more in for. I mean, you need to talk to John and I have three times.

290
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Yeah. I mean, he will have his own perspective on all of that.

291
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And what I was involved in was and I remember after that,

292
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the whole issue of the contractual issues with the with AstraZeneca that fell back on the department.

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And so one of the one of the things the best things I did was I brought in Richard Wicky, who, you know, previously ran research.

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He's retired. He's retired. But he ran research services for the to the University Medical Sciences.

295
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You know him, I think he, uh, he and most, um, in from my perspective, brilliant.

296
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I mean, he, when, you know, he ran, we had the best or we probably still do the best research services in the country.

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And a lot of that was put in place by Richard.

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And so as soon as I could see this whole thing just coming to pieces in what I mean,

299
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there's always an issue with the department is that the things that we do well are often on a small scale with individuals trying to

300
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put together these big things that at speed was challenging for us and and the aim of any department could do it because of our size.

301
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But but even then it became rather challenging.

302
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And and so, Richard, we brought I brought Richard in to help us to organise all the contractual issues,

303
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because that's what he did in research services in relation to AstraZeneca that completely transformed things.

304
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So then we were able to get that that underway. So I would suggest, you know, Richard is a good person to, to, to, to speak to.

305
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[INAUDIBLE] have his own perspective on these things. And so he sorted all that stuff out and he was, he, he was a, um,

306
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he was a person of trust within the university so that a lot of the issues relating to who was doing what and so on,

307
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he could sort it out without me getting involved. So that that was just the transition to A-Z.

308
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The other things that came up in the, um, around the vaccine, there were, there was a, there was a significant number of people in the,

309
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in the sort of, if you call it the oversight group or the collaborative group who were concerned that the vaccine might make things worse.

310
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Uh, uh, Sara Gilbert and Adrian, um, were convinced that there would be no harm to it.

311
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It would be just absolutely fine. But there were a number of people because when vaccines were developed against the first cells virus,

312
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that some of these viruses had adverse effects in models.

313
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Some of these vaccines. Yeah. Yes.

314
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And so there was an idea that that which wasn't completely unreasonable that the vaccine might somehow, uh, create immune complexes.

315
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It might the antibodies might bind to the, to the, the vaccine and in some way trigger an autoimmune process or something like that.

316
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Everything within that first six months seems very compressed.

317
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But but I think, you know, the delay did play out in that, um, that Andy wasn't able to complete the trial within the first wave.

318
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So the that, I mean, he, he had Andy will know the people she referred to Andy's conversations with you.

319
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But, but, you know, he'd set up various sites in the UK, obviously, but South Africa and other places.

320
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And as it turned out, the trial was not completed at the end of the first wave.

321
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And then we of course, it had gone away and then we waited.

322
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And although he was the first we were the first to get going with our trial.

323
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The, uh, you know, Pfizer Biontech, they did it.

324
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They started later. They hit a different wave in different countries.

325
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And so that meant they came, their trial results came a few weeks before us.

326
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So I think it did have an impact on, you know, I guess who came first introducing their data.

327
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But, um, yeah, it was a safe way to proceed, I think.

328
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Um, I suspect that, that, um, that if you asked Adrian Hill that he would still say, well, that, you know, it was obviously going to be safe.

329
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But, but, but anyway, that, that I remember that being one of the issues, um, and quite, quite contentious between some different people.

330
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Um, so that was a kind of vaccine thing.

331
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The other, the other thing that I remember early on is that we were scrabbling around for ideas to try and control things.

332
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Um. I didn't think that the the the screening, the DNA, you know, the the sorry, the sorry,

333
00:38:24,800 --> 00:38:33,050
the, the viral genome sequencing and sequencing was, um, was was very effective.

334
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:46,490
Um, and. You know, the the the concentrating that in these in these laboratories, it didn't seem to be working to us.

335
00:38:46,790 --> 00:38:50,180
We were asked to, um. This is the Lighthouse Labs.

336
00:38:50,210 --> 00:38:55,490
The Lighthouse Lab? Yes. I mean, they essentially did serology. Well, it wasn't serology.

337
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It was the it was the the just screening the screening the virus for the virus itself, the antibody tests.

338
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And so those, those, um, we were asked to supply our equipment to help them to do those.

339
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They were basically using PCR. So we, we sent over the equipment.

340
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But I and so we, we didn't try to replace that.

341
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The crick, for example, they made a there was quite a big fair amount of publicity from Paul Nurse about how they were doing the.

342
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Yes, they were doing their own, you know, sequencing detection of the viruses as a contribution.

343
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But, you know, to my mind, that seemed pretty paltry. Um, you know, it needed to be done systematically and, and at scale.

344
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And so we, we decided not to get involved in that.

345
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And, um, instead we, we decided that we would try and do something with serology because immune responses were a thing.

346
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I mean, it's to actually to step back a bit. We did do a lot of sequencing later, um,

347
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and we did a lot of sequencing for the government and we did a lot of sequencing for a lot of the initiatives that were being done around the country,

348
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including I remember once having to, to do a whole load of stuff the following Christmas Eve in another, you know, to bail people out.

349
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So we did quite a lot, but that wasn't I didn't feel that was the main thing we could contribute.

350
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And so we decided that we would try and do the antibody responses.

351
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Um, and so we triggered, we, we initiated a subgroup, uh, um, which again, I chaired initially,

352
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um, and, and, and later on Yvonne Jones chaired and I stepped back from that.

353
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But for the, but the idea was that we would create um, and allies a platform so an enzyme linked so, so that we could, um,

354
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so we could detect people who'd been infected initially, um, and count the number because it was, it was unclear how many people were being infected.

355
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Um, and, and then we could track the response to the vaccine later.

356
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And so we, we said this is one of the things which I don't think has been really emphasised enough in the, in the pandemic.

357
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So, um, we, we brought together a group of people who were interested in, in data management so that Brian Marston was interested in data management.

358
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So he, he put together a platform that would take samples from the,

359
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the NHS um and we'd work out how they could be processed and then the data could be analysed in

360
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such a way that that confidentiality and so on was properly observed in their proper government.

361
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So he put together that there were patients who were coming in and these were these these were going to be samples that would be sent,

362
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but they could be patients. But these are samples. So this is not the onus.

363
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,560
This has this is the way. Yeah, this is and it is the onus.

364
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:07,639
Yeah. Yeah. So so yes.

365
00:42:07,640 --> 00:42:13,070
So one of the approaches stepped back about the Office of National Statistics Survey.

366
00:42:13,400 --> 00:42:17,150
That was that that was being run by Sarah Walker. Yes, I've interviewed her.

367
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And so, uh, and yeah, she rightly got an OBE for that.

368
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I mean, she's, she's still doing this survey, you know, exhausted, I think that she's still doing it.

369
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Um, and so she was running a survey looking at the frequency of the, of detection of the virus, and then the serology was added to that.

370
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Um, so, but, you know, offsetting that up was, was not just motivated by trying to help Sarah.

371
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It would be was, it was this kind of separate enterprise. But of course, you know, it was part and parcel of the same.

372
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And so yeah, we put together. Brian And then the other key people were Derek Crook you have done him.

373
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So Derek uh, Derek was doing a ton of other stuff, so he was testing all the lateral flow tests for, for the government.

374
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And the thing that made that possible is that we were collecting samples.

375
00:43:11,630 --> 00:43:18,290
So one of the junior doctors he called, Alex MENSAH, was charged with collecting samples and he was in charge of that.

376
00:43:18,560 --> 00:43:21,650
So he was collecting samples from people who've been infected.

377
00:43:22,430 --> 00:43:34,880
Um, and, uh, and then Derek was taking those and using them to, to, uh, to test these different, um, devices.

378
00:43:35,510 --> 00:43:38,659
Um, we were. We were. And,

379
00:43:38,660 --> 00:43:49,100
and and so then Derek was able then to provide us with samples for of people that we knew had been infected in order to test the serology platform.

380
00:43:49,520 --> 00:43:52,639
So that was important. The other people involved were Gavin Street.

381
00:43:52,640 --> 00:43:56,510
And so Gavin had started to, um, to.

382
00:43:56,540 --> 00:44:00,590
So we, we'd asked Gavin could because he'd been working on dengue and made antibodies,

383
00:44:01,490 --> 00:44:08,840
we decided that he would be the right person to, to start making antibodies against, uh, the cloning, our antibodies.

384
00:44:09,140 --> 00:44:14,870
So he started doing that and then those antibodies were then used as standards for making the, the platform.

385
00:44:15,260 --> 00:44:20,150
And the other thing that we were able to do was make proteins because as I mentioned before,

386
00:44:20,570 --> 00:44:26,840
the structural biologists were making these proteins anyway to study the structures and they Stuart was doing that.

387
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:33,950
And so he made the, uh, we, we made proteins and so we had the ingredients for making these tests.

388
00:44:35,270 --> 00:44:43,160
And so we started, we, we trialled the proteins that were being made with proteins from the very specific.

389
00:44:43,190 --> 00:44:48,750
Yeah, they were the spike protein, the thing, the spike proteins on the surface of the virus that we wanted to, uh,

390
00:44:48,980 --> 00:44:57,080
which in an effective vaccine we thought then later turned out to be true, you could block that interaction and stop the virus infecting you.

391
00:44:57,320 --> 00:45:07,250
That would be the basis of the immunity against the virus. And so and so we the test is basically put the, the, the, um,

392
00:45:07,850 --> 00:45:17,420
you cover plates or little wells in plates with the on a microscopic scale, the, with the, the protein.

393
00:45:17,780 --> 00:45:21,799
And then you come in with the serum from the patients and see whether they've got antibodies that bind to.

394
00:45:21,800 --> 00:45:27,260
And then you take those and you, you make it that as a fluorescent output.

395
00:45:27,860 --> 00:45:32,689
And so, um, so we passed that and then we want to do it at scale.

396
00:45:32,690 --> 00:45:37,220
We, we partnered up with a company called Thermo Fisher Scientific, which is a,

397
00:45:37,820 --> 00:45:43,880
which is the biggest supplier of, of, of medical equipment and reagents sort of worldwide.

398
00:45:44,720 --> 00:45:50,480
And we were very lucky that because, um, John Bell put me in touch with, um.

399
00:45:52,670 --> 00:45:55,910
Mark Stevenson, who was the chief operating officer.

400
00:45:55,940 --> 00:46:01,160
He's a he's a somebody from the UK, but of course based in the States.

401
00:46:01,850 --> 00:46:07,520
And we already had a collaboration with him because we were thinking before I was trying

402
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:12,169
to set up something before the pandemic with thermo fisher and structural biology.

403
00:46:12,170 --> 00:46:16,100
So one of the really into technologies is I'm going to go a bit long here,

404
00:46:16,100 --> 00:46:20,780
but that one into technologies, I don't mind the deadline because I think so.

405
00:46:20,900 --> 00:46:29,330
Yeah. So one of the, one of the interesting technologies that we're trying to develop is something called cryo electron microscopy tomography.

406
00:46:29,720 --> 00:46:37,730
And this is being developed at the Rosalind Franklin Institute in on the Holywell campus and in other locations.

407
00:46:38,060 --> 00:46:41,030
And these machines are these are electron microscope,

408
00:46:41,030 --> 00:46:46,130
special electron microscopes with special platforms that can look at the structure of cells in 3D.

409
00:46:47,060 --> 00:46:51,560
So electron microscopy, you know, classically is in 2D. But these look at the structure in 3D.

410
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:54,950
So you can look inside cells and look at viruses and all sorts of things in their life.

411
00:46:54,960 --> 00:47:01,670
So it's going to be transformative and very expensive, like Venus, like millions of pounds.

412
00:47:01,670 --> 00:47:08,960
But we wanted to do this because one of the special things that structure biology does here is we can look at pathogens,

413
00:47:09,170 --> 00:47:12,350
you know, in a containment lab, and we want to do that.

414
00:47:12,350 --> 00:47:16,220
And it's still it's still an aspiration for us, but we're moving towards it.

415
00:47:16,460 --> 00:47:21,200
So in order to do that, we decided we would team up with Thermo Fisher anyway because they make their microscopes.

416
00:47:21,650 --> 00:47:29,420
And so we already had a bit of a collaboration going with an official. So when it when this serology thing turned up, we thought, well, well,

417
00:47:29,600 --> 00:47:40,730
I thought we will contact Mark Stephenson and see if they can help us out and, and particularly to, um, to automate the process.

418
00:47:42,590 --> 00:47:46,579
And then that brings me to another person I should have mentioned called Daniel Ebner, who runs it.

419
00:47:46,580 --> 00:47:57,890
You talk to him? Yeah, he runs a robotic robotics for us and he helped us to set up the the to automate it in its early stages and but you know

420
00:47:57,980 --> 00:48:04,850
we realised we would have to be running this 24 seven sort of service in order to survey the whole of the UK population.

421
00:48:05,270 --> 00:48:11,030
And so we talked to Thermo Fisher. Thermo Fisher helped us in two ways.

422
00:48:11,180 --> 00:48:14,420
They helped us to set up two robotic platforms.

423
00:48:14,690 --> 00:48:19,520
So this is another thing where the weather department deployed its resources, you know, at risk.

424
00:48:19,820 --> 00:48:27,170
So we, we, we, we signed off £2 million to buy the robotics at discount from Thermo.

425
00:48:27,500 --> 00:48:33,260
And they helped us to set the robotics up in a sort of in a somewhat contained system.

426
00:48:33,260 --> 00:48:40,130
And we ripped out some of the lab spaces and put this robotic thing, which is still working, still being manned by the staff.

427
00:48:40,460 --> 00:48:48,950
And we did it so that we could we could measure the spike protein antibodies get spike protein, which is the target of the vaccine.

428
00:48:49,220 --> 00:48:57,110
But we also wanted to target the nuclear protein as well so we could look at people who were the nucleoprotein isn't part of the vaccine.

429
00:48:57,380 --> 00:49:00,830
So if you've got antibodies against a nuclear protein, you've had the bona fide infection.

430
00:49:01,130 --> 00:49:06,350
So we could we could look at the two. So we had both of these platforms running. So every sample came in, we, we'd run.

431
00:49:06,530 --> 00:49:10,490
So the samples came in through the, the hospital.

432
00:49:11,180 --> 00:49:23,090
I was a big, I was a big fan of the NHS and I thought that the way to do these tests on a national basis was not proven Lighthouse Laboratories,

433
00:49:23,420 --> 00:49:28,700
but to engage the NHS hospitals in this and to do a more dispersed model.

434
00:49:30,050 --> 00:49:34,790
I mean clearly getting that organised might be problematic, but I thought the way to the NHS,

435
00:49:34,790 --> 00:49:39,020
so I wanted to demonstrate partly, you know, how the NHS could do this.

436
00:49:39,500 --> 00:49:50,090
And so I and so I got, so we cut the deal with the local trust that they would receive the samples.

437
00:49:50,090 --> 00:49:59,780
These were blood tubes that been taken by the off the knife artistic survey people and they would be sent to the hospital here.

438
00:50:00,110 --> 00:50:05,269
They would sort of barcode them, register the data in an anonymous way.

439
00:50:05,270 --> 00:50:09,590
And then we would they would then ship those to us just down the corridor.

440
00:50:09,830 --> 00:50:17,000
We would have a robot, would cat would take the capsule for them and array them in these 396 world plates.

441
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:21,950
So and then we would freeze those and then we would bring them over to our robot and we

442
00:50:21,950 --> 00:50:25,790
would run them on and then we would report the data back to the Office of Statistics.

443
00:50:26,120 --> 00:50:32,239
And that was where the data flowed once and so quite complicated and took a lot of meetings.

444
00:50:32,240 --> 00:50:42,260
We were meeting, I think, every other day or every day at one point with very good support from various people in in statistics.

445
00:50:42,770 --> 00:50:47,839
David Eyre was a particular person I could pick out who was a junior researcher.

446
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:50,900
Who. Yeah. E. Y. R e.

447
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:58,910
And and he would he did a lot of statistics helping us to to quality control things because quite often we were finding work.

448
00:50:58,910 --> 00:51:04,940
We'd have to repeat it. You know, the and and so, yeah, we set that platform up.

449
00:51:04,940 --> 00:51:08,150
Thermo helped us to create the, the robotics.

450
00:51:08,510 --> 00:51:18,170
And one of the, one of the, another issue of the serology platform was we needed to, um, we, we needed to sort of see Mark our client,

451
00:51:18,200 --> 00:51:25,339
mark our platform to show that it was obvious quality and that was part of the requirements of the government.

452
00:51:25,340 --> 00:51:29,899
And of course, we, we, we didn't really do that terribly.

453
00:51:29,900 --> 00:51:36,469
That was not what we particularly did, although Derek was still doing, was doing that for the, um, for the allies of platforms.

454
00:51:36,470 --> 00:51:45,080
And so we, um, we got, we, um, we, in collaboration with Thermo,

455
00:51:45,080 --> 00:51:50,030
we were able to sort of take that process forward and with their support because that's the kind of thing that they did all the time,

456
00:51:50,030 --> 00:51:51,260
is developing tools.

457
00:51:51,680 --> 00:52:01,879
And then Thermo Fisher, uh, decided that they would invest in a new factory to make the, um, or refurbishment of their existing factories.

458
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:06,050
I think it was in Swindon or somewhere like that that, that would manufacture these plates.

459
00:52:06,530 --> 00:52:15,680
And so they were doing all this at cost, um, or of, for free basically to help the effort, you know, driven by Mark Stephenson.

460
00:52:16,190 --> 00:52:20,840
And so they would then in the end they manufactured the plates for us with the,

461
00:52:21,140 --> 00:52:26,420
the proteins which we were previously making and we shipped just a lot of protein to them.

462
00:52:26,420 --> 00:52:27,980
And then they used that and they,

463
00:52:28,160 --> 00:52:33,440
those plates would come and we'd get the samples and then we would run the allies as important to the office, enough to autistics.

464
00:52:33,740 --> 00:52:37,129
And I'd have to check.

465
00:52:37,130 --> 00:52:42,660
But I think, you know, we've done I mean, I don't know the latest data, but, you know,

466
00:52:42,710 --> 00:52:48,530
we've done millions and millions of these samples from um, the last I think was over 3 million,

467
00:52:48,860 --> 00:52:56,390
which when you think that, that, um, of the complexity of doing those assays, um, and so in the first hand,

468
00:52:56,510 --> 00:53:02,480
once we set that up, we agreed that we would do a £50 million contract to, to supply this data.

469
00:53:02,810 --> 00:53:08,780
I was a bit anxious about that because it was a big commitment that could end us in a lot of trouble.

470
00:53:08,810 --> 00:53:13,130
With the government. Yeah, with the government, yes. I mean but there wasn't any flex.

471
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:18,889
There was I mean, they were very helpful, but we were not a commercial enterprise doing this.

472
00:53:18,890 --> 00:53:25,880
And it was a big risk to us because when as happened occasionally it didn't work and we had to repeat things.

473
00:53:26,060 --> 00:53:33,200
And these were millions of pounds. We were, were costing us millions of pounds to do this every, uh, you know, every month.

474
00:53:33,710 --> 00:53:39,050
Um, I mean, a good example was not in early on, but later on we decided to change the tapes.

475
00:53:39,050 --> 00:53:44,720
I remember for, for big it was must've been a supply issue, which is another thing we would doing the supplies.

476
00:53:45,020 --> 00:53:48,360
So we changed the tapes that we used in the in the robot that's. Yeah.

477
00:53:48,470 --> 00:53:53,810
And the pipettes and, and everything went, everything went haywire coincidentally.

478
00:53:54,050 --> 00:53:56,480
And so we traced it back to the pets.

479
00:53:56,750 --> 00:54:02,840
And then Dave Stuart took, took some of these pets and put them in the electron microscope and they were just full of gunk,

480
00:54:02,840 --> 00:54:04,880
you know, they're just not properly manufactured.

481
00:54:05,120 --> 00:54:12,650
But it because we had to repeat all of that batch in order to produce the data for this, essentially for Sarah Walker to process.

482
00:54:12,980 --> 00:54:18,440
And you know, that that that, you know, that just cost us millions of pounds.

483
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:23,090
So, you know, we were I was all we were always on a knife edge with this thing.

484
00:54:23,330 --> 00:54:28,190
And Sarah, who's, you know, was kind of just feeding it back data say, well, the data doesn't good.

485
00:54:28,340 --> 00:54:32,959
Oh, there's been a step change in the data. So we're all the time chasing to do so.

486
00:54:32,960 --> 00:54:39,980
And I think that it's now settled out for that. But that was kind of quite an unnerving.

487
00:54:39,980 --> 00:54:50,150
But but the yeah, I was, I was very proud of the way that came together because unlike the vaccine, um, it came together completely from scratch.

488
00:54:50,600 --> 00:54:55,610
We, we, we'd never, we knew, had to make a, um, you know,

489
00:54:55,610 --> 00:55:01,219
and we knew how to make proteins and antibodies and so on, but we'd never brought those people together.

490
00:55:01,220 --> 00:55:07,040
And some of them had never met each other before. And, and I thought that was really good.

491
00:55:07,400 --> 00:55:10,820
We started with blood bottles and then we went to fingerprint tests.

492
00:55:11,240 --> 00:55:14,570
Um, and then we had, we thought about doing blood spots.

493
00:55:14,900 --> 00:55:21,890
We didn't really get round to doing blood spots, but um, I actually funded, um,

494
00:55:22,310 --> 00:55:29,780
some work in Thailand because I thought the blood spots would be great for collecting blood samples in low and middle income countries and,

495
00:55:30,080 --> 00:55:34,879
you know, large populations for trials. And so we're actually trying to work that out now in Thailand.

496
00:55:34,880 --> 00:55:43,550
So we provided we got we with we bought from thermo again at a discount the robotic

497
00:55:43,550 --> 00:55:47,960
platform which we shipped to Thailand so that they could do serology there as well.

498
00:55:49,100 --> 00:55:52,379
Excuse me. The blood clots go onto some kind. The position paper.

499
00:55:52,380 --> 00:55:57,800
And then the idea was you punch those out and you, you, you take out the antibodies from them and yeah.

500
00:55:57,810 --> 00:56:05,250
And I thought that would be a great way of, of, of doing similar roles of platforms for different diseases overseas.

501
00:56:05,460 --> 00:56:13,470
And so, yeah, we're trying to get that working. Um, that's a sort of a sort of spill out project from that, um, yeah.

502
00:56:13,470 --> 00:56:18,390
So that, that we were so yeah, super, super pleased with the way that worked out.

503
00:56:18,390 --> 00:56:25,410
So we did serology, not mainly, um, we had a bit of fun with some of the there it crook,

504
00:56:25,410 --> 00:56:31,440
you know, was, is, is, you know, an astonishing person of huge energy.

505
00:56:31,440 --> 00:56:35,340
And um, he really came to the fore.

506
00:56:35,550 --> 00:56:43,560
He's another person. He also got an OBE for his work, which, you know, he was a superstar for me and he and Tim,

507
00:56:43,590 --> 00:56:47,160
Peter and they were alongside Sarah Walker, as you probably know.

508
00:56:47,400 --> 00:56:52,770
And Derek was doing all this, this, you know, testing all these kids.

509
00:56:53,250 --> 00:56:57,870
Um, and he worked with, um, with Miles Carroll.

510
00:56:58,860 --> 00:57:04,140
You know, Miles can be heard. Miles So Miles Carol was the head of research at Porton Down.

511
00:57:04,710 --> 00:57:18,060
All right. And, um, so quite early on, we looked, Miles Carol into, um, into that now and to get the story right just before the pandemic,

512
00:57:18,540 --> 00:57:24,150
a Peter Horby come to me and persuaded me that Miles Carol should have an affiliation with the department.

513
00:57:24,840 --> 00:57:35,220
And so we agreed that he would be affiliated. I think he was he was so he had part of his post where maybe it was 20% or 40%.

514
00:57:35,610 --> 00:57:41,999
We I agreed that he would be part of the department in order to help us to develop our microbiology capacity,

515
00:57:42,000 --> 00:57:46,559
capacity against dangerous pathogens, because that is a government lab that works on pathogens.

516
00:57:46,560 --> 00:57:52,790
Yes, there are two parts. There's a government lab which it's associated with as it was, you know, and uh,

517
00:57:52,950 --> 00:58:00,629
and there's a military part which we haven't engaged with directly on the perhaps now going forward there may be,

518
00:58:00,630 --> 00:58:06,120
but, but, but this is a government labs and it was a containment lab for dangerous pathogens.

519
00:58:06,390 --> 00:58:09,990
And he he ran that. So he he was already part of the department.

520
00:58:10,260 --> 00:58:17,639
So quite early on we pulled him into these joint meetings. Um, and that was useful because he was able to isolate the virus.

521
00:58:17,640 --> 00:58:26,230
When the virus became available, those viruses were available at Portland at Porton Down and, and, uh,

522
00:58:26,250 --> 00:58:31,140
you know, later on we needed those viruses for some of our assays, so he was able to help us with those.

523
00:58:31,860 --> 00:58:35,640
And in fact, now he's a full member of the department. So he works here full time now.

524
00:58:35,700 --> 00:58:44,100
Um, and um, yes, um, so he and Derek knew each other and so that worked out terribly well.

525
00:58:44,430 --> 00:58:47,550
Um, we were making protein as well.

526
00:58:48,060 --> 00:58:51,900
So as I said, fertiliser and for the structural biology, the protein.

527
00:58:52,530 --> 00:58:59,640
But one of the, one of the funny things we were asked by, by the government, I mean often times the government really.

528
00:58:59,850 --> 00:59:06,600
Gumble Who was worth off the licences. Right. So John is basically working for the government, we're running things in Oxford basically.

529
00:59:06,930 --> 00:59:18,749
And so we asked by John supply, uh, protein to different companies and one of them was this company called Abingdon, Abingdon Health.

530
00:59:18,750 --> 00:59:26,010
We had about a third of them. Yeah. Anyway, for after we were asked to supply protein to Abingdon Health because they were making,

531
00:59:26,580 --> 00:59:31,550
um, in a screening, there was a sort of flurry of activity at the very beginning too,

532
00:59:31,860 --> 00:59:39,990
and the Treasury, uh, and government departments were just funding everything without the normal procurement process because it was such an emergency.

533
00:59:40,260 --> 00:59:45,480
So we were asked to supply proteins to these companies and we supplied a whole truckload of protein to Aberdeen Health.

534
00:59:45,990 --> 00:59:51,840
And I remember being really thinking, should we ask them, should we ask Abingdon Health to pay for this?

535
00:59:52,020 --> 00:59:56,100
I was asked, should we get to pay for the for the, you know, contribution to that?

536
00:59:56,360 --> 01:00:02,460
And I thought it's just too much trouble. George DAVIES You know, everything's pro-bono now, so we won't.

537
01:00:02,790 --> 01:00:09,179
And then there was a great big scandal about Abingdon Health that that that purportedly I mean,

538
01:00:09,180 --> 01:00:15,150
I don't know the ins and outs of it, but that that they didn't actually manage to produce anything.

539
01:00:15,540 --> 01:00:22,889
And so at that point, I was actually became rather relieved that we had never, um, you know, we never took any payment for anything.

540
01:00:22,890 --> 01:00:29,370
It was all for free for us. I mean, I don't know what the outcome of all those things was, but, but it certainly was in the papers for a while.

541
01:00:29,670 --> 01:00:35,790
And so, yeah, so I was kind of relieved that we would everything for us was just for free.

542
01:00:36,570 --> 01:00:43,110
So that was our philosophy. So yeah, we were supplying protein, we were doing these tests, we were doing the serology,

543
01:00:43,500 --> 01:00:48,540
we were helping out with the screening and those things sort of went on the background.

544
01:00:49,060 --> 01:00:58,070
Um, other things. That we did so early on once once the infection started to come to the UK and you know the,

545
01:00:58,790 --> 01:01:08,750
the then you know we will and the track and trace wasn't really working and the government couldn't screen enough.

546
01:01:09,940 --> 01:01:16,249
And um, and eventually, of course, then there was the, the, the lockdown,

547
01:01:16,250 --> 01:01:25,940
but we wanted to try and find out ways in which we could try to improve the, the tracking and isolation of people.

548
01:01:26,210 --> 01:01:33,560
And and so one of the conversations that came out of the the meeting was, was around the apps.

549
01:01:34,340 --> 01:01:37,640
So Christophe Fraser, he should know. I have.

550
01:01:37,760 --> 01:01:41,030
Okay. I've talked to Vista. Yeah. So I've got the app story. Yeah.

551
01:01:41,030 --> 01:01:43,800
Him so. Yeah. So I to tell me all of it but yeah.

552
01:01:44,000 --> 01:01:50,930
No but, but so Christof came up with the app story and told us that he had this idea about doing the apps and yeah.

553
01:01:50,930 --> 01:01:57,540
And I think that really capably big lift because it was a time when we didn't have the vaccine and you know,

554
01:01:57,590 --> 01:02:05,930
we wanted to do something and I, I, I thought that was, you know, that just gave everybody well, that's such a smart idea.

555
01:02:06,560 --> 01:02:11,000
And, um, you know, it should have worked better.

556
01:02:11,450 --> 01:02:19,899
Um, there were issues that weren't there about which way it should go and the issues including the data centrally or distributed.

557
01:02:19,900 --> 01:02:27,370
Yeah. And um, and then the negative, the negative press was, you know, just, it was awful.

558
01:02:27,370 --> 01:02:34,560
And I. I mean, the apps were rolled out in other countries.

559
01:02:36,210 --> 01:02:43,710
You have such an original idea. And I thought that, you know, Kristof deserves a lot more credit for that, really.

560
01:02:43,770 --> 01:02:50,160
And I you know, against everything else that was done and of course, it was,

561
01:02:51,210 --> 01:02:55,560
as with many things, is slight negative, negative connotations that happened.

562
01:02:55,570 --> 01:02:59,459
I think that just, you know, slightly seemed to diminish it in the public.

563
01:02:59,460 --> 01:03:01,320
But I thought that it was a great idea.

564
01:03:01,650 --> 01:03:09,530
And even in theory, you know, it would have controlled things, um, and it would have controlled things without,

565
01:03:10,500 --> 01:03:15,780
without all the need for, you know, you know, the, you know, the same degree of lockdown and everything.

566
01:03:15,780 --> 01:03:22,950
But, but, but persuading the population that they to accept that was obviously, you know, just too much.

567
01:03:23,400 --> 01:03:29,810
Um, I mean, it's, it was impressive the way the U.K. population accepted the vaccine compared to other things.

568
01:03:29,970 --> 01:03:35,129
So that that's great. But that, yeah, the apps was just, you know, although it's clear,

569
01:03:35,130 --> 01:03:39,060
save thousands and thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of lives was the estimate.

570
01:03:39,070 --> 01:03:47,190
So I mean, it did do a lot of good, but that was a that was the thing before we got to the vaccine and before we got to recovery and and other things.

571
01:03:48,510 --> 01:03:59,490
So recovery was the, the other big thing that we did in the first six months, um, and Peter Horby was again the initiator of recovery.

572
01:04:00,030 --> 01:04:04,760
I mean, there's a lot of stories about this, but, but basically Peter was the person who,

573
01:04:04,770 --> 01:04:10,080
who initiated that and then he roped in Martin Landry to help him with the talking person tomorrow.

574
01:04:10,140 --> 01:04:19,080
Yeah. He brought in Martin to, to help him to organise the, the details of the trial because that's something that do very well.

575
01:04:19,560 --> 01:04:27,090
Um, and they made a great team in, and there were other people, Richard Haynes and others were on the course.

576
01:04:27,090 --> 01:04:30,090
They were also in the Department of Population Health.

577
01:04:30,390 --> 01:04:37,430
And so that, that, that then recovery kicked off and you know, that game was an NHS initiative really.

578
01:04:37,440 --> 01:04:40,980
So another great example of how you can get the NHS to work.

579
01:04:41,700 --> 01:04:49,650
They were quite a lot of people though I have to tell you, who thought that, that, that that was a, not a very smart way to tackle things,

580
01:04:50,220 --> 01:04:56,700
who actually felt that that the trials that we should be focusing on were the special reagents,

581
01:04:56,700 --> 01:05:06,450
antivirals and other things that it was a damn thing to do to, to be, um, you trying dexamethasone and these sort of cheap things.

582
01:05:06,450 --> 01:05:13,259
I mean, how is that going to work? You know, you need a specific targeted treatment and that we shouldn't be spending time on that.

583
01:05:13,260 --> 01:05:19,740
But I disagreed and I thought it was important. So we we really pushed ahead with the recovery and it turned out that was right.

584
01:05:20,190 --> 01:05:27,120
Yeah, well, those the showing that dexamethasone did work, but also for showing that lots of things that people were claiming worked didn't work.

585
01:05:27,180 --> 01:05:30,749
Yeah, yeah. And yeah.

586
01:05:30,750 --> 01:05:35,880
So that's been a, that's been another terrific output.

587
01:05:36,240 --> 01:05:42,480
Um, and yeah, I mean, I hope that that will continue.

588
01:05:42,810 --> 01:05:50,010
There were a lot of other trials that we were involved in, a court catalyst, so on and so forth.

589
01:05:50,250 --> 01:05:53,520
There were lots of them and there was a lot of.

590
01:05:55,440 --> 01:05:59,820
Yeah. Anyway, there were a lot of trials and they're all, they're all kind of on record.

591
01:06:00,240 --> 01:06:08,190
Um, so, um, one thing that I think is sort of slightly mentioned, but obviously you needed funding for all this.

592
01:06:08,190 --> 01:06:12,390
And I've seen elsewhere that you've talked about philanthropists. So, I mean,

593
01:06:13,170 --> 01:06:18,700
how much of a hotline did you have to the Vice Chancellor and council and that that was just

594
01:06:18,700 --> 01:06:23,820
sort of central university administration and the fundraising effort that was going on there?

595
01:06:26,160 --> 01:06:33,390
Um, that's a good question. I.

596
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:46,740
I don't think that. The the philanthropic fundraising made much difference in the first real wave.

597
01:06:47,700 --> 01:06:59,120
Um. And in most of what was funded was funded at risk by us or or funded.

598
01:07:03,390 --> 01:07:06,570
I have to think back to how we funded the this role.

599
01:07:06,720 --> 01:07:10,830
I mean, the serology platform, for example, was funded at risk by us, but then funded by government.

600
01:07:10,870 --> 01:07:17,249
Yeah. Um, the, the vaccine stuff was funded by government.

601
01:07:17,250 --> 01:07:25,380
By Cepi. And, um. Gates and other people feel pretty sappy and then taken over by AstraZeneca.

602
01:07:26,670 --> 01:07:34,950
And so I don't have the impression that the philanthropy made a very big difference in the first wave.

603
01:07:35,310 --> 01:07:42,150
And then when it did start to come, um, you know, a lot of it was directed towards the vaccine.

604
01:07:42,930 --> 01:07:48,750
So if you had to look at what, where the money came, a lot of it came towards the vaccine, which, you know, had more profile than anything else.

605
01:07:49,300 --> 01:07:57,030
Um, and in event eventually funded posts. So it funded posts and, and tests and other people.

606
01:07:57,400 --> 01:08:02,970
Um, but I don't, I don't think in the very early phases it was a critical thing.

607
01:08:03,420 --> 01:08:09,360
Um. Um, and our relationship with the fundraising.

608
01:08:10,770 --> 01:08:17,100
A lot of the fundraising. I mean, Carly NEARY, who was very early, who was in the medical science division.

609
01:08:17,850 --> 01:08:22,650
She played a big role in our meeting, so she was looking for opportunities and so on through that.

610
01:08:23,250 --> 01:08:31,080
Um. But no, I think I'm talking about the Rapid Response Fund, which Patrick Grant oversaw,

611
01:08:31,740 --> 01:08:34,970
which he gave me to understand that they barely had to ask them.

612
01:08:34,980 --> 01:08:38,280
It's just that we're donors who were just saying, What can I do?

613
01:08:38,290 --> 01:08:41,730
His money. And they had. So they had a fund that they could.

614
01:08:42,120 --> 01:08:44,390
Yes. I didn't believe very about it.

615
01:08:45,150 --> 01:08:51,180
Well, in the in the detail of all the different things that we were doing there, I'd have to go back and have a look.

616
01:08:51,390 --> 01:08:55,770
There may well be things that that were that were assisted.

617
01:08:55,780 --> 01:08:56,999
I mean, for example,

618
01:08:57,000 --> 01:09:08,530
I remember that that Gavin's great and needed money to assist with with making antibodies and so and and quite all of that money was that money.

619
01:09:08,550 --> 01:09:14,730
A lot of it was philanthropic. And so we, we disbursed money to Gavin to, to do that.

620
01:09:15,390 --> 01:09:22,310
Um, I don't know how much came from a rapid response fund for, for endowment.

621
01:09:22,430 --> 01:09:29,700
I have a feeling that most of this money came directly from philanthropists to us through.

622
01:09:29,700 --> 01:09:38,460
Through Carly. But clearly, there were instances like that where we funds were useful for, for making proteins and other things.

623
01:09:38,920 --> 01:09:42,330
Um, so let's just turn to your own lab.

624
01:09:42,690 --> 01:09:45,749
You know my lab? Yes. In my lab.

625
01:09:45,750 --> 01:09:48,240
There. Anything? It did do a bit, didn't it? I found a few papers.

626
01:09:48,580 --> 01:09:59,489
Um, well, I got put on papers by people who thought that I'd coordinated things, but my lab, my research assistants,

627
01:09:59,490 --> 01:10:07,319
went to work doing for other labs during the period because my lab doesn't do infectious disease wasn't closed down.

628
01:10:07,320 --> 01:10:13,050
So my, my, yeah. My contributions were more in principle instead of organising.

629
01:10:13,120 --> 01:10:16,630
Right. Um, yeah, I.

630
01:10:18,510 --> 01:10:25,200
Yeah, I think that that's, uh. Yeah, yeah. And my research assistants helping out elsewhere.

631
01:10:26,100 --> 01:10:29,719
Um. Yeah. What else?

632
01:10:29,720 --> 01:10:37,430
I mean, so I think we've got to pathology, I suppose we could talk about, but other antiviral discovery.

633
01:10:37,430 --> 01:10:43,159
That's another thing we did. But, but, you know, we could go on for hours, probably the, the moonshot test.

634
01:10:43,160 --> 01:10:52,150
I was very keen that we made antivirals and we weren't very we didn't managed we managed the moonshot which is this a crowdfunded today.

635
01:10:52,170 --> 01:10:55,400
Yeah. That's a good example isn't it. Yeah. But, but that, that was funded,

636
01:10:56,420 --> 01:11:04,950
that was operated by the lab in Ukraine that made the antiviral drugs and then there were people around the, the, um, and.

637
01:11:07,340 --> 01:11:13,310
Scientist medicinal chemists who were out of work because of the pandemic contributing structures and so on.

638
01:11:13,490 --> 01:11:20,750
And that did end up, of course, with a with a lead compound, which was then which is now funded for a phase one trial by.

639
01:11:21,110 --> 01:11:26,120
Welcome. It was a it was a bit slow, though. You know, it was it was a great idea.

640
01:11:26,120 --> 01:11:29,550
And it would. But there was no IP attached to intellectual property attached to it.

641
01:11:29,900 --> 01:11:37,730
And so I, I became anxious that that that was not going to be you know, that wasn't the right route to make stuff quickly.

642
01:11:37,760 --> 01:11:43,520
It was it was too slow. And I, I think that's still right that, you know,

643
01:11:43,550 --> 01:11:49,850
there were other companies that can make pharma would make antivirals like Pfizer and others quite quickly.

644
01:11:50,340 --> 01:11:55,280
Um, and then they would, they would have market value because they had intellectual property.

645
01:11:55,490 --> 01:12:01,070
So I wanted to try and use our capacity to create drugs as in the way in the manner

646
01:12:01,100 --> 01:12:04,850
the moonshot with our structure biology make the diamond to make antivirals.

647
01:12:04,850 --> 01:12:13,630
But it failed really. And we made lots of pitches to Gates and others to start something up, but we never got much traction with that.

648
01:12:13,640 --> 01:12:16,910
And then now that's evolved to try and look at other pathogens.

649
01:12:17,690 --> 01:12:21,769
So we weren't successful in getting I don't think we could have done better with that.

650
01:12:21,770 --> 01:12:26,999
And we should still be able to make lots of antibodies against other families of past threats.

651
01:12:27,000 --> 01:12:32,930
And you just need to be systematic. So that wasn't successful. I was we we looked at the pathology.

652
01:12:32,930 --> 01:12:36,560
We did the combat study, if you know about that. It they've done the combat.

653
01:12:36,890 --> 01:12:40,340
So this is this is led by Bill Poole.

654
01:12:40,340 --> 01:12:47,600
Clansman was the person who really led the immunology for us. Um, but the combat study was,

655
01:12:47,600 --> 01:12:58,490
which was a sort of multi-omics study of cells from people who had COVID or other forms of sepsis trying to identify what the signature disease was.

656
01:12:59,450 --> 01:13:03,320
That that study was led by Julian Knight in the world.

657
01:13:04,540 --> 01:13:11,360
And so that was a kind of huge study which was published in Cell last year.

658
01:13:12,620 --> 01:13:20,090
Yeah. And I was a co-author on that and, um, and.

659
01:13:22,560 --> 01:13:26,880
I mean, that was I mean, that's a kind of a landmark study of comparing different approaches.

660
01:13:27,240 --> 01:13:31,740
But again, I personally felt were you know, it took a long time to get going.

661
01:13:32,310 --> 01:13:39,330
Yeah. I remember often talking to Julian, ask him to engage with the enemy faster.

662
01:13:39,660 --> 01:13:43,290
And in the end, because I don't think it would made any difference if he had.

663
01:13:43,290 --> 01:13:49,109
And in fact, in the end, he did this kind of beautiful piece of work which which I think is, you know, will inform what we do next time,

664
01:13:49,110 --> 01:13:56,460
which, you know, a lot of this my sadness is that a lot of these lessons will will just be forgotten.

665
01:13:56,580 --> 01:14:01,830
But that was what I was going to come to, was what how how have things changed as a result of this?

666
01:14:01,830 --> 01:14:07,260
And what how do you see the department learning from it and moving forward?

667
01:14:07,260 --> 01:14:13,040
But you think things have. Well, the pandemic science is that Pete is leading.

668
01:14:13,050 --> 01:14:16,590
Yes, I think that's got it. That's got a huge amount of scope.

669
01:14:16,630 --> 01:14:21,870
I mean, I would it's it's terribly disappointing that the government hasn't put any money to it.

670
01:14:22,370 --> 01:14:35,550
And after everything and one of the things that Peter and I did is, I mean, we realised that Oxford could be just the only centre.

671
01:14:35,580 --> 01:14:38,640
I mean it just wouldn't work, you know, within the UK.

672
01:14:39,930 --> 01:14:52,190
And so I wrote to the heads of several of the other medical schools to ask them if they would like to form a, a pandemic sciences network with us.

673
01:14:52,200 --> 01:15:00,419
And I also wrote to the I wrote to, you know, to the to to Paul nurse at the crick and other people.

674
01:15:00,420 --> 01:15:06,780
And they all signed up for this idea. So we started to put together a consortium and then and then Peter subsequently led that.

675
01:15:07,530 --> 01:15:12,030
And but I was also trying to persuade the government that we should.

676
01:15:12,030 --> 01:15:22,780
And I wrote lots of several letters to, um, to the Department of Health Business and so on, trying to persuade them that, that,

677
01:15:22,790 --> 01:15:27,300
that it would be a good investment to put some money both into the network but also into Oxford,

678
01:15:27,660 --> 01:15:31,260
because, you know, most of the other countries were, you know, creating sentinel institutes.

679
01:15:31,260 --> 01:15:35,850
And I thought that would be important. And we never got any traction on that.

680
01:15:35,850 --> 01:15:43,110
And, you know, the Boris came by and visited the Joanna and the story from from Louise with that he promised a lot of money, but it never came.

681
01:15:43,440 --> 01:15:51,400
And yes, that was that was bitterly disappointing to me after all the effort we put in and

682
01:15:51,890 --> 01:15:58,520
and I thought how much we'd contributed that they wouldn't see the logic in,

683
01:15:58,530 --> 01:16:02,370
in, in forward funding.

684
01:16:02,370 --> 01:16:06,149
As for future events, I mean, given the economic impact and of course,

685
01:16:06,150 --> 01:16:10,470
we're still seeing the economic impacts now only and goodness knows how much all this trouble in,

686
01:16:11,070 --> 01:16:16,560
you know, elsewhere would have been avoided if we if we hadn't had the pandemic.

687
01:16:16,860 --> 01:16:23,129
You know, the borrowing is huge, isn't it? So, yeah, I felt that, yes, I am.

688
01:16:23,130 --> 01:16:27,630
The Pandemic Sciences Institute is really important, and it's not just for the kind of stuff that we did,

689
01:16:27,630 --> 01:16:30,330
but it's obviously important for policy and and other issues,

690
01:16:30,330 --> 01:16:36,870
which I think they're going to address with, um, you know, be cautionary words and the, and the blavatnik and so on.

691
01:16:36,870 --> 01:16:46,880
So, I mean, I think I'm really supportive of all of that. Um, and, uh, so I think that that's clearly a big thing that's come out of the problem.

692
01:16:46,950 --> 01:16:50,759
And the philanthropic funding for that has been, has been wonderful.

693
01:16:50,760 --> 01:16:59,190
And it's not just for the building, um, but also the programmatic support that we've had from the MO family in particular.

694
01:16:59,280 --> 01:17:05,040
And, uh, it's been, that's been wonderful. Um, so that's, that's a great success.

695
01:17:05,340 --> 01:17:10,160
The other thing, I mean, I was relatively new to being head of department when this happened.

696
01:17:10,830 --> 01:17:22,920
And so, um, but, but, and so on a personal level, it's been, it's been a great way to get to know everybody.

697
01:17:23,610 --> 01:17:30,480
Um, some people have had a baptism of fire, but that's, yeah, well, it's just a great way of life, like living several years in one.

698
01:17:30,840 --> 01:17:43,229
And, um, I, I've come to, you know, one of the things that I've come to wonder is, you know, as we change going forward and doing more pathology,

699
01:17:43,230 --> 01:17:49,890
many of the things that are relevant to this, you know, what are the other big projects that we should be doing collaboratively within the department?

700
01:17:50,430 --> 01:17:55,799
And and, you know, how could we recapture something of that going forward?

701
01:17:55,800 --> 01:17:59,070
Because, you know, it was it was awful.

702
01:17:59,070 --> 01:18:04,709
But at the same time, it was a wonderful experience. Yes. I mean, you talked about people talking to each other who've never, never met.

703
01:18:04,710 --> 01:18:08,360
Yeah. So, yeah. The contacts between the different units.

704
01:18:08,370 --> 01:18:13,020
Yeah, exactly. It must be much closer than they were. Yes. And so I would like to know what we could do.

705
01:18:13,200 --> 01:18:21,239
It's difficult because, you know, outside of pandemic, it's it you know, we were all individuals.

706
01:18:21,240 --> 01:18:24,470
And in Oxford we. Even more individualistic than others, probably.

707
01:18:24,770 --> 01:18:28,310
And so how you get the people to start rowing in the same direction.

708
01:18:28,620 --> 01:18:33,620
But because we're all very because university also has a lot of very powerful individual rowers.

709
01:18:34,010 --> 01:18:37,280
When they all rowed together, it's it outstrips everything else.

710
01:18:37,280 --> 01:18:43,339
And that's what happened in the pandemic. Everybody came together and started pushing in the same direction.

711
01:18:43,340 --> 01:18:49,249
And it was wonderful. How I would like to know if we could recapture that around even partially around

712
01:18:49,250 --> 01:18:55,550
some projects and get everybody rowing together again and keep that momentum going.

713
01:18:56,800 --> 01:19:05,900
Uh, I mean, I think there will inevitably be some sort of return to normal operation, which is, you know, people working in silos.

714
01:19:05,900 --> 01:19:09,020
And that would be a great shame. So that's what I'm going to try and do.

715
01:19:09,500 --> 01:19:15,950
Um, and, uh, yeah, I, I, that, that's my ambition.

716
01:19:16,430 --> 01:19:20,680
And in the meantime, I'm trying to keep the department growing because, you know,

717
01:19:20,690 --> 01:19:28,640
there are the economic challenges always come back and um, keeping the, the, the devolve structure that we have that's important.

718
01:19:28,670 --> 01:19:32,180
Um, when there were economic challenges, one of the, one of the things that,

719
01:19:32,210 --> 01:19:42,530
that really concerned me at that first meeting in January was that was about the optics for Oxford that,

720
01:19:44,220 --> 01:19:47,870
you know, what would you, how would the public perceive us?

721
01:19:48,410 --> 01:19:59,890
Um, because, you know, we've previously had such bad press for, you know, our elitism and, and everything else that, you know, all those.

722
01:20:00,470 --> 01:20:05,540
I don't think we have that in the same medical school, but, you know, the undergraduate thing, you know,

723
01:20:05,540 --> 01:20:12,829
and you know, my cousins, you know, you know, you know, other people in my you would never dream of coming here.

724
01:20:12,830 --> 01:20:13,730
It's just alien, right?

725
01:20:14,240 --> 01:20:26,450
And, um, you know, I came here, you know, my dad was a student here that, you know, I had some inkling, but, um, and so I was very sensitive to that.

726
01:20:27,350 --> 01:20:33,890
Um, and I remember that at the first meeting and the 23rd on the 30th of January,

727
01:20:34,340 --> 01:20:38,810
the thing that, that most the thing that I said first off in the meeting is, you know,

728
01:20:38,840 --> 01:20:39,740
we've got to do something,

729
01:20:40,160 --> 01:20:48,590
but we've got to be very careful about how we do this or we mustn't let this appear like some Oxford University research bonanza and that,

730
01:20:48,590 --> 01:20:56,230
um, that, uh, you know, the public will perceive us exploiting in some way, you know,

731
01:20:56,240 --> 01:21:00,620
what is obviously a, you know, an international human tragedy in order to,

732
01:21:00,980 --> 01:21:13,010
um, you know, once again, you know, blow our own trumpet or create some sort of vanity project or virtual signalling type thing.

733
01:21:13,010 --> 01:21:16,700
But the, the oh, make money out of the vaccine go backfire.

734
01:21:16,700 --> 01:21:19,879
Yeah. Or. Well that was, that I think was part of it.

735
01:21:19,880 --> 01:21:23,750
And um, so we're super sensitive to that.

736
01:21:23,750 --> 01:21:31,910
And so one of the things that we didn't do early on is, you know, I did write to Jeremy and we did start talking to the government.

737
01:21:32,300 --> 01:21:42,709
Um, but, but I was, I was, I was really anxious not to, not to give the wrong impression and also to our colleagues in other universities.

738
01:21:42,710 --> 01:21:48,170
I didn't want it to look like Oxford doing its usual thing, which was, you know,

739
01:21:48,170 --> 01:21:54,590
seizing the, the foreground and, and, um, and in the end, I think we did that pretty well.

740
01:21:55,460 --> 01:21:59,900
Um, and then the publicity for us has been, has been good.

741
01:22:00,350 --> 01:22:11,870
Um, so, yeah, so there was insensitivities around all this as well, um, personally and, and I think that kind of played out okay.

742
01:22:12,860 --> 01:22:16,730
Um, did you do any press yourself?

743
01:22:17,270 --> 01:22:24,470
No, no, no. I, I, you know, I stick to it.

744
01:22:25,400 --> 01:22:29,270
I, i, i.

745
01:22:33,790 --> 01:22:37,360
Yeah. I thought that was enough. Basically. Um.

746
01:22:38,020 --> 01:22:42,370
Sometimes a bit too much, probably. Yeah. I was surprised by some of the people I'd see.

747
01:22:42,400 --> 01:22:45,460
Oh, that's fair enough.

748
01:22:45,670 --> 01:22:48,760
I mean, some people, you know, some people just brilliant at it.

749
01:22:49,240 --> 01:22:53,920
Um, and. Yeah, I don't.

750
01:22:54,100 --> 01:22:58,940
I don't regret not doing it because, um, it is.

751
01:22:58,960 --> 01:23:02,530
It distorts you, I think just, you know, there's a great danger of distortion.

752
01:23:02,830 --> 01:23:07,330
If you're the head of department, you just need to be, uh, you know, trying to facilitate things.

753
01:23:07,330 --> 01:23:12,580
I think that's your key role is to pull people together and, and hope that at the end of it,

754
01:23:12,580 --> 01:23:17,469
you come out with a stronger department and with people still friends with each other.

755
01:23:17,470 --> 01:23:22,900
And also the the people in the department, you know, they need to respect the direction of travel.

756
01:23:22,900 --> 01:23:26,140
And I think that's all worked out well for me. So I'm, I'm happy with that.

757
01:23:26,560 --> 01:23:29,980
Um, the engagement with the press can be awful.

758
01:23:30,310 --> 01:23:34,600
I think for some people, um, it's awful.

759
01:23:35,200 --> 01:23:38,500
I think it's awful. You know, some people have been feted, haven't they?

760
01:23:38,530 --> 01:23:45,160
It's been quite challenging. I feel if you look at it how, um, you know, how they cope.

761
01:23:49,660 --> 01:23:54,650
I mean, I don't think they fundamentally the people in the department have fundamentally changed or somehow,

762
01:23:54,770 --> 01:24:00,440
you know, have a different opinion of themselves. But it's very difficult to deal with the people's perception of you.

763
01:24:03,200 --> 01:24:06,350
And that just I think they just grind you could grind you down.

764
01:24:06,560 --> 01:24:10,010
I mean, I don't obviously my contribution to this would never be in that category.

765
01:24:10,010 --> 01:24:18,260
But that's just an observation. I have people in the department. Um, um, my, my, my role is kind of less defined.

766
01:24:18,830 --> 01:24:25,700
I mean, I mean, I mean that Peter Horby, for example, I mean, he, he,

767
01:24:26,180 --> 01:24:36,980
he did a fantastic job in charge of Nervtag and they got another acronym New, an emerging respiratory viruses group or whatever it was.

768
01:24:37,280 --> 01:24:42,950
But, but, but, I mean, so he was already doing that. And then he did a, I think a wonderful job.

769
01:24:43,250 --> 01:24:47,300
Um, that, and I saw it and recovery.

770
01:24:47,820 --> 01:24:50,930
Um, and, and he handled the press very well.

771
01:24:50,930 --> 01:24:59,090
Sarah was, obviously was, was, was, um, obviously she's a person most people recognised for the, in the pandemic.

772
01:24:59,780 --> 01:25:05,090
Um, and she is, she is a, you know, great calm way of dealing with the press.

773
01:25:08,540 --> 01:25:13,660
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm sure you've got things to do.

774
01:25:13,670 --> 01:25:23,350
I would like to talk a little bit about how the circumstances of the pandemic lockdown and so on impacted on you personally.

775
01:25:23,380 --> 01:25:28,150
So presumably after that. Well, from March anyway, the meetings were all online.

776
01:25:28,150 --> 01:25:31,300
You were you were working from home where you were. Did were you able to come in?

777
01:25:31,540 --> 01:25:37,120
Yes, I was working from home and I was surprised how how effective it all was,

778
01:25:37,510 --> 01:25:42,190
you know, how how my and this is still true where we're meeting in person.

779
01:25:42,190 --> 01:25:45,250
But but how you know,

780
01:25:46,180 --> 01:25:54,819
how productive it could be working online people not so personal but but if you want to hold a meeting I mean the initial meeting that we had,

781
01:25:54,820 --> 01:25:58,510
everybody could sit around the the conference room table just about.

782
01:25:58,960 --> 01:26:05,920
But then when the meetings really got going and everybody was dialling in for the for the weekly sort of fix of of,

783
01:26:06,310 --> 01:26:12,160
you know, research, we would have we had way too many people than we could have had in a meeting room.

784
01:26:12,160 --> 01:26:17,050
And so the trip was just flicking around people, trying to keep people on screen and everything else.

785
01:26:17,350 --> 01:26:27,370
And, but it was just more effective. So, um, for me, yeah, I, and what I was doing that, that was fine.

786
01:26:27,730 --> 01:26:37,990
Um, from the department's point of view, trying to keep the work going was very challenging for the professional services teams.

787
01:26:37,990 --> 01:26:46,390
And I mean, they did, they did an amazing job because, you know, most unlike most departments, we were we were just as busy.

788
01:26:46,820 --> 01:26:51,490
Yes. So my you know, my lab got repurposed in order to do other people's work for other people.

789
01:26:51,610 --> 01:26:55,960
But there were people coming in and working in the lab. Yeah. Yeah. So there were people coming working in the labs.

790
01:26:56,320 --> 01:27:00,820
People were asking us to prioritise access to labs that they could do their projects.

791
01:27:02,290 --> 01:27:07,750
You know, there's a multiplicity of different research work going on against the virus.

792
01:27:08,320 --> 01:27:14,740
Um, I mean, we haven't talked much about the overseas units, but, you know, they, they did an incredible job.

793
01:27:14,770 --> 01:27:25,440
The, you know, in, in, in, in, for example, in Kenya, the, the, the unit on the coast in Khalifa, run by Philip Bagian, um,

794
01:27:25,660 --> 01:27:38,139
you know, did most of the, um, the viral screening for, for the, in Kenya and the, the director of the unit in, um, in Nairobi,

795
01:27:38,140 --> 01:27:49,690
Edwin Barrasso, who's, who's a, um, you know, you know, his research is in policy and epidemiology of diseases and um,

796
01:27:50,110 --> 01:27:58,360
you know, he was probably the principal advisor to the government on, and so, um, so, you know, that was just in, in Kenya.

797
01:27:58,360 --> 01:28:01,569
And this, the same happened in, in Vietnam.

798
01:28:01,570 --> 01:28:04,830
Indonesia had a huge amount of, of, of activity.

799
01:28:04,830 --> 01:28:15,670
And the director of the unit there, Kevin Baird, you know, he did he did most of the sequencing in Indonesia and set up all the activity there.

800
01:28:16,000 --> 01:28:22,719
I mean, and that you know, that's a population of, I don't know, going to catch me again, but, you know, 100 million or more.

801
01:28:22,720 --> 01:28:32,350
Isn't it huge? So, so the overseas and in Vietnam, uh, Guy Thwaites, they did a lot.

802
01:28:32,350 --> 01:28:41,739
They were much more effective in their lock down in Vietnam. But he similarly did the research there, and units in Thailand set up clinical trials.

803
01:28:41,740 --> 01:28:45,490
And so there's just an immense amount of activity overseas.

804
01:28:46,090 --> 01:28:50,260
Um. You know, ongoing throughout the pandemic.

805
01:28:50,270 --> 01:28:54,430
So, yeah, I, I've scarcely scratched upon.

806
01:28:55,780 --> 01:29:02,440
Then, then, then there were the studies that, that the micro just did in, in locally in the, um,

807
01:29:03,280 --> 01:29:13,540
the first observational studies in the trust that we did, um, that Tim Peto and David Eyre and other people, uh, did.

808
01:29:13,540 --> 01:29:21,490
And um, so there's a lot of, a lot of microbiology work.

809
01:29:21,730 --> 01:29:24,910
I mean that obviously was a speciality for the department.

810
01:29:25,120 --> 01:29:33,189
And did you have to what were you personally involved in establishing the safe working

811
01:29:33,190 --> 01:29:36,880
for that for those people or did you have safety officers that just dealt with all that?

812
01:29:37,060 --> 01:29:41,440
Well, I'm responsible for safety in the department. So yeah, that came down to yeah, to me.

813
01:29:41,440 --> 01:29:47,799
But, but, but taking advice from people, um, say, for example, Miles Carroll, you know,

814
01:29:47,800 --> 01:29:54,370
with his experience at Porton Down, he was a useful person for working at where we could do those studies.

815
01:29:54,550 --> 01:30:00,340
And actually many of them, because I was chairing the weekly meetings or fortnightly, they became.

816
01:30:00,760 --> 01:30:05,589
Um, and so we, we were coordinating with the Dunn School, for example.

817
01:30:05,590 --> 01:30:15,910
And um, so I think, you know, we both those, so William James in Dunn School was doing a lot of the antiviral work and um,

818
01:30:17,320 --> 01:30:20,890
it, and it wasn't an area where we had a lot of capacity in Oxford.

819
01:30:21,580 --> 01:30:28,750
Um, that's partly why Miles was so important. Um, but William was one of the few people who really knew a lot about viruses.

820
01:30:29,050 --> 01:30:33,250
And so we were, we were through those meetings we were linking up with, with him.

821
01:30:33,580 --> 01:30:43,290
Yeah, that was a, um, when I do comes back to me now and uh, yeah, there were other people who were developing, um,

822
01:30:44,050 --> 01:30:51,040
you know, technologies for screening and um, you know, out of that and they were from the, not from our division,

823
01:30:51,040 --> 01:30:58,630
but they were from, you know, engineering like, like SRI for example, and for which we who to, um,

824
01:30:59,590 --> 01:31:05,410
developed a screening tool that then I think then rolled out in Heathrow and he developed a company to, to do that.

825
01:31:05,620 --> 01:31:14,379
But, but our assistance to him again was supplying him with proteins and samples so that he could, he could do that work.

826
01:31:14,380 --> 01:31:18,430
So it was all part of the the big sort of collaborative effort that we built together.

827
01:31:19,360 --> 01:31:23,950
Yeah, it's, um. No, I think what I'm really driving at is what was it like for you?

828
01:31:23,980 --> 01:31:30,370
What? I mean, were you. I'm sure you're someone who works very hard anyway, but were you putting in more hours than you would normally?

829
01:31:30,970 --> 01:31:38,740
No, I probably not. I was very energised by it. So I think everybody who was and then afterwards probably a bit exhausted.

830
01:31:39,520 --> 01:31:43,660
Um, I think the first year was very, was very vivid.

831
01:31:44,350 --> 01:31:51,400
Um, the second year of the pandemic, um, became a bit of a blur to me, I think.

832
01:31:51,740 --> 01:31:58,780
I, um, I was trying to step back from, from, you know, driving every bit of it.

833
01:31:58,780 --> 01:32:04,900
I was handing over stuff to Peter and, um, you know, handed over the serology screening platform to Yvonne.

834
01:32:05,410 --> 01:32:11,620
Um, and, you know, I think this for many people we just became a bit relentless.

835
01:32:12,250 --> 01:32:19,149
Um, I, yeah, I don't think I particularly suffered through it at all.

836
01:32:19,150 --> 01:32:26,799
I mean, it was, you know, my, my family, you know, my wife's a, um, you know, one of the senior nurses here.

837
01:32:26,800 --> 01:32:40,960
So she was working full time. Anyway, I did, um, I did some work on the wards, um, in general, general medicine and seeing some of the renal patients,

838
01:32:41,290 --> 01:32:48,189
I mean that was awful because, you know, getting gowned up and everything just is, it was kind of a horrible experience.

839
01:32:48,190 --> 01:32:51,850
But was that something you went back into or had you done a little bit?

840
01:32:51,970 --> 01:32:56,650
No, I always done renal medicine. So, um, I did do some renal clinics as well as cover.

841
01:32:57,100 --> 01:33:01,470
Um, but then the general medicine at the. John Ratcliffe that's not something I did know.

842
01:33:01,630 --> 01:33:07,240
Um, and a lot of the junior staff here, including people who work in the, a lot of the people in the,

843
01:33:07,660 --> 01:33:12,549
in the, um, in the department who were clinicians went back to, to work.

844
01:33:12,550 --> 01:33:19,690
So, um, that was another big contribution of the, of the A&M to the response locally.

845
01:33:22,960 --> 01:33:30,310
Yes. Yeah. The facilities team, you know, that put a lot of stress on them.

846
01:33:30,580 --> 01:33:36,760
Yeah. Keeping things open. Um, keeping the distancing and so on.

847
01:33:37,720 --> 01:33:42,400
Yeah. Very challenging. Yes.

848
01:33:42,430 --> 01:33:46,340
Anything else you'd like to know? Well, it's just I think it's a final question.

849
01:33:46,600 --> 01:33:55,870
Has the experience, the whole experience, changed your attitude or approach to how you think about your job?

850
01:33:56,350 --> 01:34:00,640
And what things would you like to see change in the future in the light of that experience?

851
01:34:03,010 --> 01:34:10,530
Um. Well, I already knew that that that the medical school was good.

852
01:34:11,730 --> 01:34:15,390
And and, you know, I thought the department was was great.

853
01:34:15,900 --> 01:34:21,510
But it, you know, convince me more than ever how terrific it is here.

854
01:34:21,660 --> 01:34:28,890
And and I mean, I, I always had this, like, concern that I was just prejudiced.

855
01:34:30,150 --> 01:34:39,810
But, you know, this is you know, this is a demonstration to me that it really was special here and that the people I work with a very special and.

856
01:34:40,480 --> 01:34:50,049
Um, so that that that's left me with a kind of an uplifting sort of feeling about everything here that, you know.

857
01:34:50,050 --> 01:34:55,840
And I mean, you know, I was, you know, I remember I was I not this last breath,

858
01:34:55,840 --> 01:35:01,400
but I did the previous ref I was in charge of writing the the research excellence framework report for the,

859
01:35:01,520 --> 01:35:05,530
the, for the, um, medical sciences division last but one.

860
01:35:05,530 --> 01:35:12,880
And that gave me kind of oversight of everything. And I thought very impressive and, and, um, but this on a personal level.

861
01:35:13,540 --> 01:35:20,589
Wow. So that, I think, is something that, you know, now I would like to carry.

862
01:35:20,590 --> 01:35:28,500
I carry forward and, and, you know, have all those friendships with everybody that and and and that sort of more intimate level than I,

863
01:35:28,700 --> 01:35:39,729
I think because of the pandemic, um, which I, it would have taken me ten years to achieve that level of, of, you know, comradeship and everything.

864
01:35:39,730 --> 01:35:45,340
And I think that's true for everybody in the department. So I think that's that's very special to take forward.

865
01:35:45,550 --> 01:35:52,600
And then the other things that are as I said, you know, what, what are the big projects that we could do now and how could we prosecute those?

866
01:35:52,600 --> 01:35:57,730
And, um, you know, could we do something about future pandemics?

867
01:35:59,170 --> 01:36:06,639
Um, how can we collaborate more effectively with industry, with something I was already interested in, which is why we were working with them.

868
01:36:06,640 --> 01:36:14,710
I But, but that I think is something that, you know, I've become more keen on.

869
01:36:16,510 --> 01:36:27,010
One of the things I did in the last year, I, I decided that I wanted to do something more with UK industry.

870
01:36:27,790 --> 01:36:36,669
Um. You need to demonstrate that that the department could could support not just the pandemic,

871
01:36:36,670 --> 01:36:42,130
but could also support UK infrastructure and create wealth for the country.

872
01:36:43,030 --> 01:36:46,660
And it's all part of, I think, for me trying to demonstrate that, you know,

873
01:36:46,720 --> 01:36:50,950
late university like Oxford is not self-serving, but, but actually contribute.

874
01:36:51,520 --> 01:37:00,579
And, um, you know, that kind of slightly comes back to my more socialist perspective and having been to a comprehensive school myself.

875
01:37:00,580 --> 01:37:04,600
And so, and I wanted to show that, that, you know, we, this is what we do.

876
01:37:05,230 --> 01:37:08,820
And, and so, um, so yes.

877
01:37:08,820 --> 01:37:15,370
So I've kicked off more collaborations of industry now and I would like to do more in the pandemic area.

878
01:37:15,370 --> 01:37:19,390
So I'm still hunting down partners to do antiviral drug discovery.

879
01:37:19,810 --> 01:37:27,010
Um, and I, with help from transboundary, you know, who's in India?

880
01:37:27,370 --> 01:37:30,009
Um, you know, I got an introduction for John Simons.

881
01:37:30,010 --> 01:37:40,630
He's the chair of, um, as you know, of GSK because we were doing stuff with AstraZeneca and so we started a joint institute with GSK this last year,

882
01:37:41,170 --> 01:37:54,069
um, with, you know, Tony Wood who's the new, um, uh, chief scientific officer for is British for GSK.

883
01:37:54,070 --> 01:38:00,160
We've got a joint institute going and I'm hoping that at some point we might do buy into vaccines.

884
01:38:00,160 --> 01:38:06,010
And so I'm with them. Um, they're obviously a good partner for us because they're interested in many of the same areas of research.

885
01:38:06,490 --> 01:38:15,820
And so I'm, I've been encouraged to, I'm encouraged by the experience of the pandemic just to start thinking more about how we can do,

886
01:38:16,330 --> 01:38:20,799
we can create industrial partnerships and not only have impact, you know,

887
01:38:20,800 --> 01:38:26,440
have impact in various different ways, um, because that, that joint working was good.

888
01:38:27,490 --> 01:38:34,090
Um, so I think that has also my perspective on that has also been changed.

889
01:38:34,270 --> 01:38:37,720
It's difficult, say change, you know, because I was so fresh to the job.

890
01:38:38,890 --> 01:38:44,500
Um, and so my, my position has not been terribly fixed before this had happened.

891
01:38:45,250 --> 01:38:52,750
Yeah. But it's crystallised things for me. Yes, it, yes, it's, it's, yes, it's crystallised things.

892
01:38:53,230 --> 01:38:56,350
Yeah. Great. Thank you very much.