Fast-tracking a vaccine Christina Henderson
A tightknit team has worked around the clock at the University of Queensland since January, fast-tracking the development of a vaccine for COVID-19.
“It’s been a rollercoaster,” Project Manager Christina Henderson says. “It’s been an immense effort from the entire team – scientists, laboratory assistants, management and support staff, finance and legal teams, technical experts – and our families too, sacrificing family time, sleep, hobbies, downtime. We often work from early morning until very late at night, and through the weekends. It’s been hard emotionally, and quite draining, especially now that it’s lasted for months and there are many more months of hard work ahead.
But this is what we must do to have a shot at halting the spread of the virus.”
A year before COVID-19 broke, CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation) had funded the UQ team to develop its revolutionary new technology, ‘the Molecular Clamp’, which was designed to speed up vaccine development in case of a pandemic. “But none of us anticipated this day would come so soon,” says Christina. “In the last few months everyone’s been working in overdrive, trying to complete all phases of vaccine development within unprecedented timelines. It’s been a wild ride.”
As part of that plan they have taken the extraordinary step of beginning mass production of the vaccine candidate while clinical trials are still underway. It’s a financial risk (made possible by extra funding from the Queensland government) but if it pays off, it will greatly reduce the time between testing and the potential release of a vaccine.
“It’s been exciting and a little scary, I watch the global numbers rising every day,” says Christina, who took time out last weekend to celebrate her son Robert’s third birthday. “The biggest stress for me personally is trying to be on top of such a dynamically evolving project. This is far from a typical vaccine project trajectory and is extremely challenging to manage, but it has to happen this way. Taking the traditional route would mean losing valuable time.” ST