Can you just start by saying your name and what your job title is?
So my name is Marion Watson. And my job title is head of operations here at the General Vaccines Unit.
Okay. And just as briefly as you can, can you give me a sort of quick rundown from when you first got interested in biomedical science in general to,
you know, the main landmarks on the way to arriving here? Yes.
So right the way back from school, biology was my top subjects and sciences generally,
but particularly by biology and chemistry with my main interests.
So my first degree was biochemistry, which I did at Imperial College in London from 7679.
So it was very much I chose that one because the first year was very joint over a lot of biological sciences.
So you didn't have to really specialise till you knew a little bit more.
So towards the end of that I realised that if I really wanted to get on in biological sciences,
I really needed to do a Ph.D. So I did my Ph.D. straightaway at St Mary's Hospital in London.
So basically I spent six years in West London and Imperial and St Mary's Hospital
were very closely linked at the time and now they're the same organisation.
And what was your deal? So my PhD was on X chromosome X linked to genetic diseases and following them through genetic pathways.
So we were taking blood samples from families with genetic diseases and tracking them with restriction polymorphisms.
So it was kind of the beginning of molecular biology. So this was conditions like muscular dystrophy.
So we had a group of muscular dystrophy, cystic fibrosis.
I was actually working mostly on a disease that's not serious, but we had a very useful family,
which was called thyroxine binding globulin deficiency, which is still unpleasant, but it's not fatal.
But they had a big family, so we could follow the DNA and follow the DNA markers quite well through the family.
But yes, the main the main links, muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis.
And so it's been even across the years, it's been a joy to actually see the progress of the genes really being discovered and moving into treatments.
Mm hmm. So you started out studying, presumably thinking you were going to be a geneticist?
No, I started out thinking that I would go more into sort of the biochemistry,
possibly in the hospital type world, because that was one of the pathways at the time.
But really into the research of biochemical pathways.
And one of the one of the most inspiring speakers we had, or a lecturer I had when I was Imperial,
was I mean, anybody who does biochemistry will be familiar with the,
the TCA cycle and what I stand for to try, you know, I can't even remember that high carbon,
I can't remember, but it's known now as the TCA cycle, but then it was known as the Krebs Cycle.
You had its crap and we were taught by Sanskrit citric acid.
Yes, it could be. It think must be something to has to have suck.
But it's so long ago. But we know it's the Krebs cycle.
And the key thing was that we had a guest lecturer who was Sanskrit, who was actually quite interested.
What Dan is couple of years just before he died.
And it was he was inspiring because he just thought he has really worked out something about how our cells work that's very intrinsic.
And that was really what I wanted to do. And I suppose in a way I have done,
but I've gone into the nucleic side of of things so I think carboxylic acid back up with a tale long ago this says okay so armed with your Ph.D.,
what did you go on to do? So at that time I got married just before I finished my Ph.D. and so we had to do a
little bit of compromising about where we wanted to be and where we wanted to work.
My husband wanted to move out of London. I didn't particularly, but that was one of the compromises.
So we were not wed. Not very far from London, went to High Wickham and I got a job with G.D.,
which was company based there then, and he was working for various computer companies.
So I went into a team that were working on the molecular biology of yeast and using yeast to effectively design and grow human proteins for us drugs,
particularly interferons. And so it was kind of the beginning of using molecular biology to actually treat people.
And that's kind of the career path I've been in ever since.
Is is in the sort of biomedical side. Of microbiology.
How did you find working in pharma as opposed to in an academic setting?
It's very different in that you didn't. Ironically, because actually we got bought up by Monsanto and made redundant.
But I would have said one of the reasons was that you didn't have to rely on where the next crop was coming from.
And on a three year grant, by the time you're halfway through, you're starting to think about where your new grant is coming from.
And so going into industry took that pressure away.
And it was ironic because three years in we got redundant because the biotech industry was being bought up
by all sorts of companies and we got bought up by Monsanto who are American and they assets of the company.
So I then went to work for Baxter in a very similar job, but now having three years of actually experience working on yeast,
molecular biology, I was brought in to help extend their vector biology group by bringing adding the yeast side of things.
So which was fine. But I found working for Glaxo and in those days it was just Glaxo.
Glaxo. Great research. You were a very tiny fish in a very, very, very big pond.
And so we did the molecular biology bits and then it was passed onto the protein people.
And you would just felt like you were in a, a chain of which you which you are, you're in a chain.
And you were a little bit. So, yeah, he felt that I felt quite lost really.
As a scientist, I felt quite lost. So I then went to a company which I saw, which was a Start-Up Company called Turnover in Slough.
And that was the other side of things. It was Tiny Company, I think I was employee number 30 and they were about the same thing in 20 years,
molecular biology and also micro-organisms to either develop new drugs or design new drugs.
And my role there was setting up assays to identify potential new drugs.
And I was I was there for six years.
And then they launched on the American stock market at the point where biotechnology was just becoming less popular,
didn't do very well, and they made half the company redundant, including redundancy.
But so since then, so then really was when I decided to kind of go back into academia because also an industry they kind of knew.
So I could be sent anywhere to look at new therapeutic models or ideas.
And I can remember one day when my husband had been working in America,
he came back one day and I went off to somewhere in Europe and Italy the next day.
And we weren't quite how handing child over at the airport, but it was literally a day apart.
So I took the opportunity then to think,
let's go back to being a bit more part time and a bit more flexible while my son was in early years school, which went fine.
So I came, I came to Oxford and I've been here in different roles.
I've worked Oxford Brookes. I was the clinical trial field chair for a while.
I did a lot of teaching of how to work in clinical trials.
All the legislation and all the the sort of the rules, if you like, behind which are very extensive when you're essentially experimenting on people.
So when did you begin to develop your expertise in clinical trials?
Because you were telling me about in the in the drug company, it didn't sound as if you were involved.
Well, it was it wasn't clinical trials, no. Yeah. So in a way, my career has kind of followed the drug discovery pathway.
So I was in basically the methodology and then setting up assays to find new drugs
and actually did a tiny bit of liaison with the people who do the the animal work.
But very little it had very little to do with the animal work. But I also when I was at Nova,
I was also liaising with the chemists who take the interesting what molecules we found and modify them and then give them back.
So they go into assays to see if you can get something that's even better.
So that's the pathway and that's what I was doing. But at that point when I started in Oxford,
I was part time at the Health Authority at the time doing all sorts of research support and part time Oxford Brookes where
I when we got to 2003 was when people really woke up to the fact that new legislation was coming in for clinical trials.
So the Clinical Trials Act in the UK came in in 2000, in 2004 and so in 2003 people.
So say we need training in this. So at Brooks we set up, which I led on, we set up a course for planning and managing clinical trials,
which sort of was was taught face to face and then very early.
Early on in the game, we turned it into a learning, which is something I did so and that is now known as GCP or GCP,
which is ICAO International was conference on harmonisation it a big international conference to try and behave the same,
if you like, in clinical trials across the world so that you can work together more easily and you can pull results more easily.
So that was that. That's now that is nice. GCP But it came in in 2004 in the UK in real terms too.
So having a GCP is good clinical practice.
Practice, yeah, should be good clinical practice for research really to not confuse it with conditions in the in the clinics.
So we were getting a little bit ahead of the game and really that was my introduction into obviously to develop the training you had,
I had to really come to terms very quickly with what was planned and what was ongoing at the time, and that's where I've been really ever since.
So I wrote two books and then I moved out into Oxford University, working particularly in the Research Governance Office.
So reviewing protocols, mentoring people, teaching quite a lot, teaching,
which I enjoy because I was teaching a lot at Brookes as well, which is great.
And then when my son left home to go to university, I felt like I need a change.
I'm not going to get into empty nest syndrome.
So I took a job at Imperial College in London, which is a bit like going home because that's where I do my degree.
But it was at Hammersmith in the clinical research facility and I worked in quality and governance there six years,
then got fed up of driving down the M40 and came back to Oxford.
So I spent three years over in end dorms, which is orthopaedics and rheumatology.
And then I came to the Janna in August 2019,
very timely thinking that it was going to be a reasonably quiet job, possibly see me through to retirement.
So that was in August. And then and what were you?
What vaccines were you? So anyway, so at that point we were working on malaria obviously was a huge programme.
I had also actually while I was at Brooks,
I was also had forgotten I was part time biological safety officer for the trust for gene therapy and genetically modified organisms.
So I actually worked alongside the the Jenner Institute right back from 2001.
So I knew the background, I knew the trials, particularly malaria.
TB And then in recent years they dated flu, hepatitis.
What else? I've got warnings about Ebola, the Zika murders, which is Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome, really important for the COVID work.
Flu, yes, a whole range. So the Jenner over the years of other groups that were wanting to work on various infectious viruses, viral diseases,
the Jenner has been the place to to sort of migrate to because of the expertise that we that the the Jenner already had.
So it had expanded into a huge number of of a vaccine.
So all of that was ongoing when I started in 2019.
And so my role was as head of operations. I had to find out if it was a new role to try.
And because the Jenner had evolved fairly sort of organically and with a lot of groups working fairly separately.
So my role was brought in to try and harmonise more and bring things a little bit more together and get a little bit more joint working,
which was what doing reasonably well until November.
And then in November I had a detached retina download, so I had ten weeks of sick.
I had surgery at the jail at the Oxfordshire Hospital who were fantastic.
And I said, you know, I've got very, very good vision.
They they saved my sight and it worked well, the treatment worked.
So I came back in January having had a break and expect a break and straight into meetings to plan for COVID.
Yes. Yes. So I was going to I mean, I was ask everybody at this point, can you remember when you first heard about it?
But presumably it was arriving back in the office and that was all anybody was doing very well.
We didn't know what was happening at that stage. We didn't know it was going to be a pandemic.
We didn't know if it was going to be like Sars-cov-1, which appeared in China and disappeared fairly quickly.
The hope was it would be the same. But thanks to certain people here, particularly Sara Gilbert, had the insight to well, let's get going.
And I would you mentioned Merz, which is this Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona virus,
which we were already working on, and they'd already run a trial here in Oxford, the first in human early.
His trial just started running the same type of trial again, repeating the trial in the Middle East and I think in Saudi.
So they were in a position to say, well, we know how to get started.
So they did. So that was in January.
And then, of course, the pandemic was announced on the 23rd of March.
And it was a matter of I was going to say simply, I shouldn't say simply, but that there was a design,
the vaccine had a piece that you could take it out and slot in again, and you just needed the right piece for that because they'd worked on Merz.
And so the backbone, which course we know is called Chadox1, which is Chimp Adeno and Oxford one.
So a lot of the of the vaccine trials that we were already working on were using these chadox1 backbone.
And you can almost think of it well, it's sometimes you describe it as having we talk about platform technologies,
but we sometimes say it's like a cassette that you don't buy a new cassette player.
Every time you buy a new cassette, you just slotting in the little bit that you want, which is the cassette.
So that's that's really how it is. You know, we have the backbone.
DNA would have been in the freezer. All they had to do was design and build the spike insert, which they knew was a good target.
Again, because we'd already done the murders where they knew exactly what to look for and where to go.
And they're similar. Similar enough. Thankfully, COVID isn't as fatal as those murders is 30% fatal.
It's a very nasty disease. But so we didn't know whether COVID was going to fizzle out or end up 30% fatal.
We have no idea. So yeah, so that's what thing.
So yes, the building blocks were either in the freezers ready to go or could easily be made.
And that's that's what they did. So the first phase, obviously, is all in the labs when they're they're building building the actual vaccine.
And then, of course, the next phase is to go over to the clinical biomanufacturing across the road from where I am at the moment.
And they would make up they made all our first batches.
And then you ready for a clinical trial? Well, you've got all the approvals, which is also.
Yes, because I have talked to some of the people from the vaccine team.
So let's get really into what your role was in getting ready to run those trials.
So I actually stepped back a bit from partly from my job.
So part of my job at the time was actually to put all the other work on hold so that
we needed to pull everybody into into the COVID work because because we needed to.
But also the the directives that came down from the NIH or National Institute of Health Research, but from the university.
And obviously with lockdown people, really the only research that we were really allowed to do with COVID,
everything else pretty much had to go on hold, except that you had to be aware of patient safety.
So some of my work areas did carry on a little bit because if you had a participant on a clinical trial already that had an experimental vaccine,
we had to make sure that they were okay. So the people that were already recruited,
we still had to do all the safety follow up and the be blood tests and and visits that they still had to part,
if not really for the science more for their safety to make sure that everybody was was fine.
So there was a little bit of work carried on, but a lot of what I was doing was basically helping people to put their their vaccines to bed,
which we didn't know whether it was three months, which I think was in people's minds and it was,
you know, more like 18 months before people could really get going.
And and there are a lot of rules around putting trials on temporary holes.
So I wasn't working direct contacting the regulatory authorities, but I was passing on the information.
Keeping all the teams involved in informed was a lot, a lot of it.
But I also obviously then I wasn't really needed to do operations so much on on the COVID work.
So I moved sort of sideways and little back to my skills, one of which is what's called GCP monitoring, which is quality assurance or quality control.
I get them mixed up, but basically about the quality of the trials.
So I worked with the quality, the safety, the Kuwaiti and the quality team to work on that, making sure that our data was squeaky clean.
So there's a lots of checks that have to go because you've got information coming from blood tests and clinics, from the clinicians you've got.
All sorts of information coming in different directions and it all has to go into one database and making sure that everything is done accurately.
So some of it was literally going back and checking data to make sure that everything had been entered correctly, looking for any gaps in the data.
It's all standard sort of GCP monitoring. So I spent quite a lot of time doing that.
We also were inspected by the MHRA, both of our first two trials, which is the phase one two and the phase two three.
And so I was quite heavily involved in preparing documents and working with the MHRA too, because obviously they they were very good, actually.
They were really helpful, very supportive because normally you, you know, you they would you would inspect just the trial.
But all the time they had a view towards us wanting to license, which normally they wouldn't do at a trial at that level.
But because obviously there was this hope to be licensed fairly quickly so that the drug could actually get out to people.
They were really helpful in trying to focus on what we needed to do to be getting licensing.
So it was a very people very scared of inspections, especially something like the MHRA.
Who are the government in effect that the Department of Health and people are quite scared of those type of factors.
I had been involved in quite a number before in providing documents, giving interviews with the inspectors, that type of thing.
But this time it wasn't at all scary.
It was very facilitative. It was very positive.
And then, of course, that there was this always some minor findings.
So then we had to make sure that any any gaps or problems or queries that they had, all of that was answered and plugged.
So I then that that went on for the time it becomes very blurred.
But that probably took me up until certainly the autumn of 2020, maybe a little bit beyond.
And since then my involvement on the COVID trials has been very heavily on safety, safety reporting, liaising with AstraZeneca.
So because the vaccines were being licensed worldwide or the different what's the MHRA?
MHRA what is which is the Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Authority?
But they're what's known in GCP as a competent authority,
and every country has their own and they all have slightly different roles and slightly different procedures.
And, you know, all vaccines licensed in something like 170 countries now, and they all want to know about the safety data.
So this was led very heavily by AstraZeneca for the licensing, but they needed our safety data.
And different countries, some countries would like safety events reported within two weeks or a week.
So we were having to report any serious adverse events that within a certain types of serious adverse the most serious ones,
if you like, within three days. So it didn't stop even Christmas New Year, we worked all the way through.
And but the frequency of those events, I mean, the people most people have heard of is this rare blood clotting.
Yes. I wouldn't come back to that little bit that you just say about serious adverse events,
the adverse events generally, the way things are in clinical trials, you have to report everything.
So if somebody twist their ankle or they feet in a curry and vomited it, that's an adverse event.
There are serious adverse event if they're death life threatening as is hospitalised for
anything or if they're in hospital and they fell out of bed and were in hospital for longer,
you have to report that again and then any,
any sort of life, anything that's sort of a serious physical disability or birth defect because we didn't
expect people to get pregnant because everybody signs up to not get pregnant or the trial.
I think we've had nearly 200 pregnancies on the trials across the world.
That's not just in the UK, that's Brazil and South Africa and Kenya, whether it's a lockdown, if a side effect possibly.
So we didn't really expect that. But nevertheless, it was useful because we could actually use the pregnancies and the practice.
That sounds awful use.
But by monitoring the women who had got pregnant, we were actually able to feed into the arguments about whether the vaccine was a risk in pregnancy.
And we've published all of that. And it and it isn't. But in terms of the serious adverse events, yes, we had them.
So we had road traffic accidents, especially once people broke out.
We had people getting food poisoning and all these sorts of things.
Very rarely just. That ends up in hospitalisation. But we did have because we had an age group that was aged, we didn't stop at age.
Normally on clinical trials, you recruit people up to about 50, 55, maybe 60.
We recruited all age groups, so we have got an older court cohort and they have a lot of pre-existing health conditions.
And again, normally in a clinical trial you will exclude all of those. But we wanted to look at real world data.
So we included all of those as well. And half the people were on our vaccine and half are on the placebo.
So we did have some fairly serious events. But actually when we looked at the placebo or comparator, actually it wasn't a placebo.
It's a comparative meningitis vaccine uses the comparator because if you use placebo,
you can work it out because we've got I've got two good friends from Imperial that were in America live on the Pfizer trial,
and they were both volunteers.
And the husband had a very sore arm and the wife didn't.
So they're pretty sure that he had the Pfizer vaccine and she had saline.
But we use the meningitis vaccine that was give you a bit of a sore arm as well.
So that makes it harder to tell. Yes.
So that's really kind of what I did in terms of the rare blood clots.
We did not see them on the trial at all.
We did occasionally have people who had say blood clots in the leg, but that's a completely different pathway.
They're not linked at all. And they happened both on the comparator and on the vaccine.
So you could use that comparison to show that, you know, the vaccine definitely wasn't causing any of that appendicitis.
We had quite on both sides of that. But no, we didn't see the blood clots.
And what's been shown since and it has been published is that there is a genetic element on the risk of getting the blood clots.
And the first symptoms tends to be about a very severe headache with about ten within about ten days.
So the, you know, people medics were on the lookout for it.
But also it's been confirmed that it is more more likely in Caucasians than it is in other Asian or African,
which has another impact for me personally.
And I've also been very heavily involved in vaccine confidence, which we started off by calling vaccine hesitancy that it's vaccine confidence.
So that was that started, although it's it's obviously gone through the department and involve people in the DNA and
in it and the paediatrics group as well that we were asked I was asked through my son,
who actually was doing a courtesy with the Church of England in Bristol.
And Bristol is an area where it still has a lot of influence of the slave trade.
And and there was an approach,
I'm not quite sure of the path where it came from a church or that was basically a black church in
Bristol who were asking why was why are we being targeted for experimenting for these vaccines and COVID?
Well, we never targeted anyone. We only ever advertise for people on the website.
And in fact, when the website opened one Wednesday evening at about 9:00 and the next morning, there was thousands more people than we could use.
The next morning actually had already volunteered, so we weren't actually invited, but a lot of other research were inviting.
And basically Bristol is such a hive of research activity, the whole of Bristol got invited virtually to do some sort of research.
But nevertheless, what we did and I led on it from here was to set up a basically a webinar for for the people from this black church,
but from health groups, from other denominations, from other nationalities.
And we set up a webinar in which people could ask in advance, could booking in advance and say, What are your questions?
Why you what's your know, what's your fears?
Where do you what do you want to know? And from that, we just answered that the quite the most prompt, most common questions.
And that was myself was one of the doctors that was on our trial in Bristol.
Obviously, she joined in. We had people from social care and health care across Bristol, which was fine.
But then what came out of that? I got a call in the middle of nowhere to say could I join a Zoom conversation with some bishops in Uganda,
one of whom had actually been listening in to this call in Bristol?
So I hesitantly said yes, and they bombarded me with questions, which then led onto a webinar.
Uganda, which also led on day one, the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Similar questions. But one of the questions and the reason I sort of brought this up is one of the as well as all the questions everybody asked you,
how did you develop it so quickly? Which is because we were already working as what's in the vaccine.
Does it make your magnetic seem to be one?
If we could produce a vaccine or anything or a magnet that was so strong that a tiny amount in your arm would make it magnetic,
we'd make a fortune and lots of concern about school,
about whether Bill Gates was involved and whether with microchips to which the answer is, well, how many of you got a mobile phone?
You know, you wouldn't need a vaccine to track what people are doing because everybody's got a vaccine.
But of course, it's not true anyway. So there's all of that.
But one of the questions you got from Africa was, is this a whites conspiracy to kill Africans?
Well, if that was true, then the brain blood clots was the complete opposite because it was more like,
you know, that would have been completely the wrong way around. Of course it isn't.
But it was a real eye opener for me, really,
about the concerns across the world and how I've learned quite a lot about how the developed countries are seen by the developing countries.
And you wouldn't have thought that would come out to working on a vaccine in the Jenner Institute.
That has been absolutely amazing and I now have friends in Uganda.
How have you been able to travel this? I've been invited, but not yet.
But I could have gone this autumn that for all sorts of reasons it wasn't the right time.
But yes, I've been invited and of course now I'm getting we've got a WhatsApp group for various and
I'm not being asked about the Ebola vaccine because there's an Ebola outbreak in Uganda,
which is the Sierra the Sudan Sudan strain.
And we were already working on Ebola.
And of course, the other part of my job was as we came out of the intensity of the vaccine of the COVID trials, starting up all the other vaccines.
So having helped shut them down, I then had to help open them all up.
And for Ebola, we have a vaccine similar in which it's chadox1 for both the both strains of Ebola Zaire strain and the Sudan strain.
So that that's being looked at now as to whether or not it could be used in Uganda
and the future of ours not to vaccinate everybody the way we have with COVID,
but to do bring vaccinations. So vaccinate people in the areas that have got the outbreak.
So that's being looked at the moment. So the only thing that we needed to do in the last few weeks was a manufacturing
more because we didn't have I think it was 71 doses in the world of our vaccine.
So they've been manufacturing more so.
And that was a so there have been more trials probably than people are aware of.
But the one that I heard more recently is the trial of a nasal.
Yes, brother. So were you involved? Yes. Yes. So again, the safety side of it.
So we know that one is covered and.
Yes, so it's exactly how our vaccine exactly as it is, but inhaled through the nose.
So they've got a little gizmo of actually sort of squirting out the nose.
Apparently it isn't that unpleasant to me. It sounded unpleasant, but apparently it's all right.
And the justification for thinking it would be a good way to go is because our vaccine is based on adeno.
And adenovirus is a respiratory virus. It's normally infects the nasal passages and the lungs.
And so it seemed to make sense that it could work as as as a COVID vaccination going that route,
which would be good for children and for other groups that really struggle with injections or don't like being touched.
So some of it, some of the groups or thoughts, I mean, practice,
we didn't manage to do a lot of work on dose and so without showing some effect and again,
it's been published now I've actually had some effect and the immunology was such that it's still better to have with hours,
the doses will be using, it's still better to have the injection.
So yes. So that work, so it's not been applied to Nicole, but other people in other groups are working still on COVID vaccines now easily.
So I think at the moment the story is they work, but not as well as injections.
And then, of course, there was the whole question of challenge trials, which was quite a contentious issue.
Yes. Which I'm I'm not involved with. I think they happen round the corner.
My own involvement was the very early involvement of on this sort of safe.
Assessment. So those are the challenges I started at Imperial.
I possibly had a little bit more to do with it Imperial because I'm still in their safety committee.
So that was taking very young,
healthy people aged up to about 30 and basically trying to find out how much virus you need to give them to catch COVID.
And all of these things go through ethics committees. All of these things go, you know, voluntary consent.
But the difference here is we were only taking people who'd already had COVID and looking at how much virus they need to be reinfected.
And I think to an extent, the the world situation has overtaken it and that we now have you know,
we've gone from the original Wuhan strain through Alpha and now on Omicron.
But that work is continuing. So there's a lot of immunology results that are coming out of that which are helpful.
But yes, it was you're right. It was it was very contentious, but no more contentious than our malaria trials where we give people malaria.
But do you have a cure for malaria? That's true.
That is true. Yes, there is a very I think the thing with the young people and COVID that I think a lot of people found difficult to stomach,
was that the possibility of long COVID? That there is you know, there are a meaningful number of people who don't straight away.
Yeah. And I have a very good friend and she's the wife of the guy who was best man at our wedding and she couldn't cope.
She's a physiotherapist with elderly people, and she caught COVID in July 2020.
And she's still not better. She's better than she was.
But she was you know, she was I suppose she was late fifties, but she was walking on a Zimmer frame for nearly a year.
She had done COVID very badly. And yes, it is.
I think in any research, though, we have to be very careful that we give fully informed consent.
So you tell people everyone and it's their own decision and people are amazingly altruistic.
Um, personally, I don't know that I would have ever volunteered for malaria trial.
That would have potentially given me malaria. I don't think I would have been.
Well, I volunteered for the COVID challenge trials.
But if enough people do and I think it's a really interesting question of because ethics committees
get a lot of of criticism for being too paternalistic and stopping people harming themselves.
And the other side of the argument is, well, people have a right if they want to volunteer for these things and they want to take
that risk and they are altruistic and they want to do it for the greater good,
then why should we take that choice away from them?
And so ethics committees get a lot of criticism for this.
And it's it's I mean, ethics research ethics is a huge area of interest of mine.
I sat on ethics committees over the years for about six years, some time ago.
And so I've seen and heard all these arguments of we can't let people do this, but do they have the right to do it?
So I would say that the participants that volunteered for that trial have the right to do so, but I wouldn't have been one of them.
Should the university have got involved in that? Well, again, I think we did have the right to sue.
And if it had really been deemed totally unethical, the ethics committees would not have accepted and not allowed it.
But yeah, you're right. It is very controversial. And.
And did you meet any of the volunteers at the trial volunteers yourself?
No, I didn't. So you can see you can see I'm in an office at the at the vaccine centre.
And it's one of the sadnesses. One of things I don't actually like in this building in our clinical area is a separate.
And what we did was we didn't have we used to fret about how we would get 30 or 40 volunteers through on a day on our challenge trials on malaria.
And now we were stepping up to get needed to get 250 or 300 people through in a day.
And one of the ways we did it was by having mobile units, one of which is still here, and the other one is gone.
So we set up these mobile units that that was had to get planning permission to essentially portacabin that you put up that sign.
Yeah, that was they looked like big marquees but with lots of vision, quite high quality ones, but they had multiple rooms within them.
And to say that one is one is still here, but they needed planning permission,
which we had to get that very quickly from the council and actually was not a cheap venture.
So a lot of that was paid for by donations so that the clinics were separate.
So no, actually, the only one of the volunteers that I really know and know very well is my husband.
So he volunteers to the first volunteers. The first trial was the first injection into an arm was the 23rd of April 2020.
And he volunteered for the second part of the trial.
And because he was too old for the first one, I think it was an age limit on the first one,
but on the second and he had his first vaccination in May, which shows how quickly things were happening.
Normally you would do the first trial, you would finish it, you would look at the data.
But actually, we overlapped them because we had to move so quickly.
So, yes, he's the only volunteer I've known very well. And I think since we have actually some people who were volunteers have moved here as staff.
So we've got at least one, one of my staff who was on the trial that turned out he was able to see, but they didn't know for a very long time.
They didn't know what they got until the national supply became available because obviously everybody was
being invited for the national supply and at that point they needed to know what they'd already had.
So that's when we unblinded people and told them what we had.
Staff were not allowed to be on the trials, and that was kind of one of the frustrations.
You've got this wonderful lifesaving vaccine in the freezers and fridges, and we're not allowed to have ourselves.
That was that was sometimes quite hard because you cannot you can only use trials stock for the volunteers.
And because it was a blinded trial, we couldn't be on it because we would have known what we would see that would compromise the trial.
And that was tough sometimes. So let's talk a bit more about what and what it was actually like living through all that.
And you said that you were pretty exhausted. It was exhausting.
I mean, I would say I'm what? I mean, what what was your situation at work where you were you were said the first few months?
Well, so when it first started, I was working here.
But then when the rules and lockdown became very strict, we had to work out for everybody.
Do you really need to be here?
So while I was doing the monitoring work, because a lot of it was around the data that was on the computer, so a lot of that could be done at home.
So from there on, after the first couple of months, really I only had to be onsite probably a day or two days a week and that gradually increased.
So I did end up with the second day.
So 2021, I was on site in the offices probably three or four days a week, but so it was a hybrid, real hybrid of working at home.
But whether I was working at home or working here is long days and the home days were longer.
So I would really be on the computer 10 hours a day, seven days a week.
At the height of the work, which was hard work, my husband looked after me.
He did all the cooking or cleaning or the lots.
He did all the housework, but he did enough, which was, you know, important.
We went we had a local supermarket that allowed us we all had letters from the
department because obviously you could be stopped by the police for driving.
But we all had, you know, sort of courtroom what the term was,
but the third workers letters so that we could so one of our local supermarkets was allowing us with with be working on COVID or the NHS.
We're allowed in an hour before the shops opened so that you could whiz round, quickly, get home, wash everything.
So for the first, I think the whole 2020 be washed or, you know,
emptied food out of containers into tins and washed everything we couldn't because being in the thick of things, we got to know how infectious it was.
And also, you know, I actually myself very personally as I have got some health conditions and I actually thought if I caught it,
I was not convinced I would survive in 2020. That's not another question I was going to ask you.
How threatened did you feel? Very it. And my brother caught it.
He caught it at the end of the beginning of December. I caught it probably Christmas Eve of 2020.
And of course, the first vaccine was licensed a week later.
And he has an autoimmune condition and we really did not think he would survive.
We were as we were planning his funeral, but he did survive. And he doesn't have long COVID, as far as we know.
So he's actually doing very well.
But yes, I think in the first year because of what we knew about Ms., because we could see and hear what was happening,
the NHS and because I was getting all this safety data of all people's other health conditions and whatever,
we were very much focussed on health and yeah, I didn't, I didn't, I thought.
I got it. I'm not going to survive. Thankfully, I was.
Well, I didn't catch it until till the country opened up again in July 2021.
When I did catch it. But you had had two vaccines.
But I do have two vaccines by that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And I had it really mild and I've had it again.
And that was probably Alpha Delta. It would have been by then.
And I had only grown in June this year. So did I again really lightly.
It was it was a cold. Wasn't a very nice cold, but no such thing.
But yes, I, I had it twice, but had I caught it in and I did lose a friend in December 2020,
she caught it at the beginning of December and she was dead in two weeks. And she's younger than me and fitter than me.
Yeah, it was, it was quite scary. We have learnt so much because from the clinicians side we've learnt that it's not you.
It's always being treated as a respiratory disease but it's also a vascular disease and we didn't know that,
you know, so much along the way and the the importance of the kind of cytokine storm, the immune overreaction.
Yeah. And so both my brother and sister have autoimmune conditions, which I don't.
I've escaped. So I was very worried for both of them, but they're both fine and they both had it.
And what did you do? I mean, while you were having to work from home ten hour days without really seeing anybody properly,
what what did you do to support your your mental wellbeing?
I'm thankful, you know, if this had been ten years earlier, I think it would have been emotionally and mentally a lot worse.
But at least we you know, I was I was we were able to keep in contact with people on WhatsApp and on my phone, but particular on WhatsApp.
So we could actually see each other so that I could, although I couldn't, I wanted to go and hug my sister.
She was one of the people that was on the government most at risk.
So she was getting these food parcel things from the government which were appalling.
So many cans of soup and very little else as far as I could work out.
They were awful. But somebody kept arriving and she had, you know, she could supplemented with supermarket deliveries.
So but seeing her on WhatsApp but my grandson was born in 2019, so he was less than a year old when the pandemic hit.
And I think for the first two man, certainly 18 months of his life,
he I think he thought all his grandparents lived in the phone because the only contact
we had was was on WhatsApp and just sort of see but we could at least see people.
But sometimes I would talk to my, my son on WhatsApp and then we'd find we were both crying because we just wanted a hug.
And so when we got to eventually being able to meet up again,
it was wonderful you it makes you appreciate what you haven't had for the last 18 months and the, the contact and being able to see people.
But, but yeah I think, I think it was yeah that was the way I also we I go to our local church and we set up
home groups on WhatsApp was a big one zoom so lots of Zoom calls with people locally.
So that was frustrating. There would be people that were down the road and I could only see them on Zoom.
Yeah, it was really difficult sometimes, but at least we did have that, you know, and at least we did have we could see people.
I think if we if it just been phone calls, I think it would have been worse.
But but, you know, I did wonder how lockdown would have worked if we hadn't had the modern technology, the schools, you know.
Yeah. In to our village actually our internet connection and was very weak.
And so the other thing that my husband did was actually got a programme together and to apply for a grant to upgrade our wife, which he did.
So that was good. That was good. But yeah.
And what about the knitting? So I've, I've my, my aunt taught me to knit when I was about seven, so I missed it all my life after the,
you know, during the Olympics, the London Olympics in 2012, we a group of us, we knitted games makers.
And we saw this with the volunteers who helped out with it. Yes.
Because I was like I was against it. So they well, they were about ten inches house.
I was against making it at the rowing. And we made quite a lot of these and people just caught on to it.
So they would donate money to whatever the chosen charity was.
Various charities and charities we did. For the Olympics once it was all sports and children.
And and I think between us, we raised over £10,000 for charities, probably an awful lot more.
You know, so that probably I probably raised about two and a half thousand just by knitting and getting people to donate the most.
Yeah, which was exciting. It was exciting because I was at the rowing, I got Steve Redgrave to hold one and just because he'd held it,
that one raised £75 because I had a photo of Steve Redgrave holding it and the one that raised the most,
my son suggested doing one with an artificial a detachable foot, and he tweeted a photo,
photo into the last leg with Adam Hills, who's got an artificial leg.
And he invited us to come and we sat in the background of the show and he had knitted on my desk.
So that one raised nearly £400 just because it sat on the TV.
So it was and we gave them to some of the sort of TV personalities, including Tammy Grey-thompson, who mentioned it in the House of Lords.
So how many of you were knitting? At that point, probably about a dozen others.
A few people knitted their own and then just couldn't money.
So but that then went into all sorts of sports events since so like Rugby World Cup allsorts that
we've knitted for and the the group were down to really only about three or four of us doing it now.
But so then when COVID hit, when I needed something,
knitting has always been my go to relaxation and I've always been the one of the over the last ten years at least,
that's come up with all the patterns for knitting.
I didn't do the original one against my kids, but I did all the other scents, and so it seemed natural to knit the virus.
So I knitted the virus and that was good fun and it was exciting.
And then someone said, Well, you can't do that unless you get the vaccine as well.
So I had to look for some electron micrographs to find out what shape the vaccine was.
And so it's actually that one is made with triangles because so I did that and it's slightly bigger than Chaddock,
so cytotoxic, slightly bigger than the COVID virus.
So I had to get a different size. And then somebody here asked if I could borrow them for some schools work.
So it was a week or so before I could get midterms. So in the meantime, I needed a scientist.
And obviously you've done a lot of figures, so that was fairly straightforward.
It was supposed to I thought it would look like a man, but I've been told since it looks like me, I think I accidentally did a self-portrait in it.
Well, and then Sean, who I'd like them to, he didn't give them back to me, but he gave them to the to the library.
So that's where it was. So I haven't seen them since I gave them to him, but that's fine.
But it was a bit of fun and I had some sitting in the office for quite a long time and everybody saw them.
It made them smile. So I thought, Good, you haven't had to demand to make some more.
I have few people have asked, but it felt like a one off. Really. I don't think I will and I don't know.
I don't think I would make him I I'll I'll need to the figures I'm always at other figures as things
come along but I call it sculpture knitting because I knit without a patent for things like that.
So this so the vaccine, the viruses and the scientist, I didn't use a pattern, but particularly viruses.
You just knit and if it doesn't quite work, you want to do it and do it.
We do it. And yes, that sculpture knitting. So there's no pattern involved because people have asked me for the patent, but there isn't one.
So I suppose I could sculpt them again, but I don't really want to.
I mean, they are unique. That's very creative.
And do you think that's I mean, do you find the science that you do creative or do you feel you need a creative outlet?
I yes. So although in science, a lot of it people think it sounds very exciting,
but actually a lot of what we do as scientists and I say I worked in the labs for 20 years when
I worked in industry and a lot of what we were doing is on the day to day is very routine.
Lots of I used to tell people I just squirt liquid into tubes.
But the knowledge and of course is what, you know, developing the reagents and the mixtures and the reactions and the cloning and and whatever,
you know, that sort of you see that the technical bits, but very often it is following standard operating procedures.
But where the creative comes is actually writing the protocols.
When I went into an industry, it was going out and talking to people that had potential therapeutic targets that a company might,
which if a company was on at the time, might want to get involved in and actually working,
looking at the basic science, researching around the literature.
And actually working out how we can go and where we can go.
So there is a creative element in it, but a lot of it is actually just very routine.
But it is a balance. So I think I need the creative balance.
I need the creative bit. So in the role I'm in now, you know, as new trials are coming in,
I need to be able to sort of look and comment on the protocols and see what people are doing.
And before it goes to any goes too far too to have an idea of whether it is a good chance that something will work.
I would say my role at that level was stronger when I was in industry and universities are full of very creative people.
So but a lot of it's teamwork. Yes.
And part of the team is playing the kind of support role that you do if you're essentially building the scaffold.
Yes. That enables them to do what the what they're going to do. And, of course, computers have changed things.
So when I started off in science, you were making. So I did some work on on yeast of how you get proteins,
external proteins into yeast cells because they've got quite a cell wall and how to get them in.
So I did quite a lot of work on, on the structures of, of, of proteins on how to get them into cells.
Well, now you can model all that on computers. So to start, when I very first started,
the only way of knowing the structure of the molecule was things like electron microscopy or its electric electron differentiation patents,
which I never worked out how you interpret those, they were really a skill.
Now you can feed protein and DNA sequences into a computer, and the computer will model it for you.
I mean, but I started out with science fiction and that's actually a point actually, you know, because I started I finished my Ph.D. in 1982,
but right the way through, you know, when I started the sorts of things that we were doing, we couldn't have predicted what we can do now.
It really would have felt like science fiction. So it's been wonderful to see things come, come to fruition.
I mean, having started with my parents deal muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis,
I was a little bit in a little bit of it back in the late seventies,
early eighties, but then to seen where it's gone and gone into diagnosis but also got into treatment, it's fantastic.
So yeah, then you talk about teamwork.
Would you say that working on cope with that collaborative element was stronger?
I mean, were you collaborating with more and different people compared with what you.
It was done before. It was huge. So, I mean, I think we had something in the region of 600 people working on COVID vaccines in 2020 and 21.
We pulled in people from everywhere. So part of that was the conditions, the doctors, the nurses that were pulled in from everywhere.
And we had 19 sites across the UK, so we had Cardiff and Edinburgh and everywhere in between.
But in Oxford we were pulling in.
So because so much research had been shut down, we were pulling in all sorts of people from, you know,
any clinical trial work, research and nurses and doctors from all sorts of realms of health care,
not just obviously not just vaccines, but from everyone, but also administrators, you know,
people that could programme computers, people that could could file without getting bored.
You know, every single thing, every pore, every function.
We brought people in who could share the workload, transcribing data accurately because that was part of my role, was doing all of the checks.
So yeah, it was, it was I think is unique.
The number of people that we had and how we had pulled people in from everywhere, of course, then our medical students.
So we had 50 medical students who were doing roles ahead of their final actual sign off.
They were 50 years. They were about to be, you know, July. They would have been fully qualified.
But we were actually using a little bit early and they were great fun.
They were clearly thoroughly enjoying working in a clinical environment that they hadn't expected.
So yeah, it was it was amazing. And a bigger, more varied communication was tricky.
So especially with a lot of people being either elsewhere in the country or working from home.
So team. Very quickly, we switched from Zoom to teams and I can't tell you why, but they both worked.
But those type of electronic meetings have been absolutely crucial.
And we're still running hybrid meetings now. Mm hmm.
Because the same culture legacy has that been of this period of work and, you know, have some things turned out to be useful?
So the hybrid working side is carrying on. And that, I think, will carry on not just where we are, but everywhere.
I think it will carry on because, you know, people are saying, well,
why bother spending three calls and marketing to work when you can do it at home and probably do longer hours at home?
So that works. And I'm no I have an open door policy here.
I do get staff who just got so many queries that sometimes I get to the end of the day, I feel I haven't achieved anything.
So when I have days working at home and we're trying and we're trying, basically our target is three days in the office and two days at home.
I'm probably four and one. Our clinical team obviously can't do nursing homes.
The nurses are full time, but I sometimes find that day, a day or two days, I work at home, I get a lot more done.
On the thing that I really missed when I was a couple of months of only working at home is the rapport with people just to be able to to,
to chat in the corridors or just to say hello, you know, possible or just go for a cup of coffee or have lunch outside in the cold.
All of that I've really missed. And I think if we do still have people that favour homeworking, I would favour being in the office.
But most people, when they started coming back very quickly were saying, Oh, it's nice to be back.
I think people do really like working as a team and actually just being able to bounce ideas.
Scientists were always bouncing ideas off of people and now, you know,
when you're back you realise that actually just to pop across to say hello, have you looked at this or whatever?
So much quicker than writing a lengthy email sometimes.
So I think people are glad to be back, but appreciate having me to one or two days working at home.
So I think that's here to stay for a very long time. Mm hmm. And about the I mean, the fact that you were able to do to run these trials so quickly,
has that made you reflect on future trials and whether they could be, you know, whether it's necessary for them to take as long as they actually do?
Very interesting question. When we've come out of code fit in terms of the governance and the applications and approvals, people are saying,
well, we did it so quickly for COVID, why can't we get our approval on this study really quickly?
But what then is taking into account that was the ethics committees, the MHRA, they worked all hours as well.
They dropped everything else and work just on COVID as well.
And of course, their workload is back. So certainly things are back to the way they were really in terms of the governance side of things.
They have tried. They are. Yes.
I think people are trying to streamline. I think there are always things that you can say, what do we really need to do this?
But I would say in the main, certainly governance and approvals has gone back to the way they were and I think it was
unique being able to get the approvals and the set up for COVID for numerous reasons.
One was other organisations like the MHRA and the ethics committees.
They worked extra hours as well. We were able to pull in so many staff and money.
So a huge amount of money that came from donors the university were underwriting is before we had any guaranteed money.
We quite a lot of us and I think this might have been even people like Andy Pollard that the first
time we knew that we had the government money money when was when it was announced at the government,
the number ten briefings that evening.
And they think it was too much Matt Hancock was and he said he mentioned the money that they had guaranteed for the trials.
And we thought, oh, that's good. And that was when we first knew.
So money was a big thing and the other was the volunteers. So we had people queuing up to volunteer, even though it was an unknown disease.
And even though things like no long COVID, we didn't know how bad it was going to be, if at all.
We didn't know the side effects. We didn't even know the virus, the vaccine was going to work.
And yet we still had so many people trying to volunteer.
Well, that's not true. And every trial.
So we have a team that just work on recruiting people into trial, using social media adverts, all sorts of things.
So sometimes recruitment for trials is very slow.
I would. So one of the legacies is that people know a lot more about research, realise they can volunteer.
So I think it is actually better than it was before. I think recruitment is going reasonably well on all the trials up to now.
How long that will continue to see? Mm hmm.
So I think this is the the final question. Has the experience of of working through COVID changed your attitude or your approach to your work?
Has it? It's certainly changed my approach to life.
Um, and I think that has, that automatically affects your, um, work, work patterns.
I mean, I always said I would never retire. And now there are so many things that I felt I missed out on in family.
I've got three year old grandson. Um, I want to spend more time.
So, although I. I thought I would never retire, maybe go part time.
And now I think. Daphne, I need to go, but I can't imagine not working at all.
Um, I am a bit of a workaholic. I've been accused of that, and I will plead guilty.
So. But maybe it's made me a little bit more circumspect on what interests me and you when
you've worked for something that has saved so many lives and been such a success.
It has sort of made me think, Well, let's go back to something like chronic diseases where it's much more of a slow burn world.
I don't think that's for me. I have enjoyed being in a sort of, you know, environment.
Um, I'd like to have more to do with the vaccine.
Hesitancy, work, confidence, confidence, confidence work.
Yes, you're absolutely right. The vaccine confidence work. One of the things this year was a huge privilege.
Um, was I actually, again through my son, I gave an interview to the church times before Christmas and Justin Welby read it.
So he invited me to dinner in London to give an Australia speech, which was terrifying.
Um, and there was a, of the people, there were basically archbishops from all over the world.
And that led to being invited to speak at the Lambeth Conference, which sets the scene for the Church of England over the next ten years.
And I met people there that were saying, we want these webinars, even with Omicron being less effective.
In fact, no more infective, but less lethal.
Less lethal, yeah. They don't know what's ahead.
And so we have had some requests to do more of that type of thing, in particular across Africa.
And I'd really like to spend more time on that. And how important do you think the church is as a medium of community in Africa?
Huge, because if you go to somewhere like Uganda, which is a country obviously now and I met well between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church,
they cover about 90% of the population and their communication pathways in a country where we don't know how to communicate in these countries
because we're so privileged between the phones and the whatsapps and social media's that we would struggle because we think it's terrible.
But actually they communicate very well. They they know what they can and can't do.
They know that maybe that their their coverage is social media is is is whatever is.
But they've got these pathways and networks that get out to the whole country.
And because it is a more faith based country, people do listen.
Unfortunately, they also listen to the fake news on social media.
So that's something that we have tried to replace the fake news with the accurate news.
And how easy has it been to get a kind of single voice within the church itself?
Um, not within the church.
Pretty good.
What's more of a problem is some of the churches right across the world, there are churches that faith leaders that don't trust healthcare.
Some of the Southern states and some of the evangelical denominations in the states in particular have been, well, it's God's will.
So if it goes well, that virus exists. So it's not, you know, we shouldn't be interfering and, you know, we should be like let let things happen.
Well, I don't believe that. I believe for me.
I believe my, um, with my pathway through life, I wouldn't say it's got controlled.
I think it's I have always been aware that I feel there has been some sort of plan and it's up to me to find out what I'm comfortable with.
But I do feel that it has. My faith has been a driving force throughout my whole career.
And in a way, what I've done over the last few years has been all the skills that I'd learnt before or been born to fruition to be able to use now.
But there are faith leaders who just say, Well, we shouldn't be doing this, that it's wrong.
So I'm not in a position to actually impact on that.
But I know, you know, I'm meeting people who are and so I have to sort of leave it to them.
But it's very frustrating when you hear people saying that scientists, you know,
this the mad scientist sort of image that comes out of old films and things.
And, you know, there are people that think that really do think there are that scientist that unfortunately,
over the years, there have been scientists who've been guilty of fraud, of whatever reason.
So that why we would be distrusted any more than any other profession is a bit hard to fathom.
But sometimes we are. But you know, what's happened in the UK, you know, you've had vaccinations set up,
vaccination centres set up in churches and synagogues and in temples and mosques.
So all the faith leaders have come to to support it.
And one of the things that get thrown at you is, especially now with what's happening in America, is that along the pathway,
very early in the pathway of vaccine development, we used cells that 30 years ago came from aborted material, aborted foetuses or miscarried foetuses.
We don't actually know which.
And so some people have accused us of promoting abortion and promoting because we've used these cells, which is absolute nonsense.
And the faith leaders are behind us and saying what we do now does not promote abortion
and does not condone what's happened in the past and that it's okay a lot in life.
I mean, it is risk benefit, I suppose, and there is no risk to us that it will make what we're doing is going to promote bad behaviour.
But yeah, it's there, it's been very interesting but yes.
I don't know, I don't think I, I think most of the people that I have had to deal with are not anti-vaxxers.
They are people with questions and fears and unknowns.
I think if I ended up with someone who's really anti-vax, I don't think I could talk to them.
I think I would have to walk away because I don't you know, if you're in a situation,
you think no matter what you can say, you're not going to change your mind. I'm not going to change my mind.
Just agree to differ. But yeah, it's been been amazing.
It's been an amazing roller coaster the last few years. And it's very sad to say I'm not going to say I enjoyed it.
I have found it very, very satisfying. And it's hard to say that when you're talking about something that has killed millions of people.
But for me personally, I feel really lucky to be where I am and to move to open eight in August 2019.
Yeah, I think I have been very lucky and and it has been incredible.
You contributed to something that saved millions of people. So yeah, it's amazing when you have a bad day, you remember that.
So like when the blood clot story came out, Andy Pollard was very good at saying,
you also focus on what you have doing and you know, every drug has side effects.
The Moderna vaccines have cardiac effects. You know, there isn't.
Is there such a thing as a completely, totally safe drug?
Aspirin causes a lot of causes haemorrhages, paracetamol, causes liver damage, you know, everything.
So, yeah, I do feel lucky. Um.
Yeah. Sorry. I'll keep going for a bit longer.