HOPE SPRINGS

As the world holds its collective breath, Professor Sarah Gilbert and a global team work on developing a Covid-19 vaccine. Here, the esteemed Oxford scientist provides an update on progress, and a small dose of career advice. Interview by Zinnia Kumar.

of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford, has dedicated her career to developing vaccines. This year, the global Covid-19 pandemic has put her work and that of her colleagues firmly into the spotlight. While teams around the world are racing for results using different technologies, the ‘Oxford vaccine’, developed by a team led by Gilbert and others, is considered one of the most advanced to date. Now in Phase III clinical trials (involving large numbers of volunteers from different ethnicities around the world) with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, it’s hoped that if trials prove successful, the vaccine may be available for Australians from 2021.

SARAH GILBERT, PROFESSOR VOGUE AUSTRALIA: What is the current progress of Covid-19 vaccines both in your lab and globally? Professor Sarah Gilbert:

“Multiple vaccines are now in phase III trials, which will allow us to understand the vaccine efficacy as well as continuing to assess safety. Those results will be provided to the regulators. Immune response to the vaccine is also being measured, so that we have a better understanding of how strong the immune response needs to be to protect people against Covid disease. Having a low level of antibodies is not enough, but we don’t know how strong the response needs to be and how long it will last.”

VA: You’ve been working on different vaccines for more than 25 years at Oxford. How did your previous experience play into the Covid-19 vaccine?

SG:

“I had worked on a way of using the same approach to make lots of different vaccines, which means that much of the work is done before any specific vaccine is made. This is one of the reasons that vaccine development goes so much more quickly now, because we don’t have to start from nothing to make a vaccine for each disease. We had been optimising the approach.”

VA: Can testing of vaccines be accelerated? SG:

“Both Vax-Hub [the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Research Hub where Gilbert is co-director] and Vaccitech [a biotechnology company she co-founded] had been working on ways of speeding up testing of vaccines in the lab, using improved technology in the quality control procedures. It used to take a long time to work out if the first stocks of vaccine that were produced were suitable to move on to large-scale manufacturing, but now we get much more information more quickly and the whole process is accelerated. We use molecular testing much more than testing in animals now.”

VA: Vaccine development and clinical trials are a globally collaborative process. What is the Australian connection with this project?

SG:

“We have collaborated with a group at The University of Queensland that provided recombinant protein for antibody assays in our MERS vaccine development program, which preceded the Covid program, and confirmed that the approach we were taking with development of vaccines against coronavirus was likely to be effective.”

VA: What was your career path into vaccinology and what would you tell others looking to establish a career in STEM?

SG:

“I studied biological sciences specialising in microbiology followed by a PhD in biochemistry, then worked in biotechnology for a few years before moving to Oxford University in 1994. My advice would be to keep your options open and don’t specialise too soon. Take opportunities to find out about other areas of STEM, not just the one you are most interested in first.”

VA: You’re a mother of triplets. How did you balance your priorities when they were very young?

SG:

“It was very tough. My only advice is to keep going. It was challenging working full-time on no more than four hours of sleep each night. I earned more than my partner, so he looked after the children at home and I tried to keep bringing in the money to keep us fed and housed. Triplets are expensive because you need three of everything and there are no hand-me-downs from one child to the next. I don’t remember very much of it, but my children grew up healthy and are much more intelligent than I am, so that was the reward.”