Joining quest for vaccine
Andy Hollings’ workload is about to get ‘‘pretty intense’’.
He is switching his job as a part-time science technician at Waimea College in Richmond, for a year’s fulltime work with a New Zealand team in the global race to find a coronavirus vaccine.
Hollings has become the fifth member of Covid-19 Vaccine Corporation, a company founded in April by Kiwi scientists, Robert Feldman, and Nelson-based Andy Herbert, using $500,000 from a group of New Zealand investors.
The company has since received nearly $490,000 from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s Covid-19 Innovation Acceleration Fund.
While there were more than 100 groups worldwide trying to find a vaccine, the technology the corporation was using was a novel one, Hollings said. It used bacteria to create nano-sized biodegradable polymer (plastic) beads, on which small amounts of Covid could be placed. The ‘‘biobead’’ technology was developed by Massey University PhD students more than 10 years ago, with a spin-off company, Polybatics, using biobeads to try to develop a skin test for tuberculosis in cattle.
Hollings worked at Polybatics with Herbert. They had discussed the formation of the company in lockdown, and Hollings was excited to have then been asked to become part of the team researching a coronavirus vaccine.
‘‘There’s no guarantee we’ll get there. [But] with all the research from the Massey University PhD students, we’ve got good evidence that this technology platform works as a vaccine.’’
The Covid-19 Vaccine Corporation was among two New Zealand companies so far to receive Covid-19 Innovation Acceleration Fund money to develop a vaccine for Covid-19, which has killed more than 430,000 people worldwide.
Some groups in other countries had already entered clinical trials, and the corporation would not be ‘‘first on the market’’, Hollings said. But New Zealand would not be top of the list to get any vaccine, if one was developed overseas, he said.
‘‘We’re trying to make a vaccine in New Zealand, for New Zealand.’’
A ‘‘big tick’’ for the company was that it would be able to manufacture vast quantities of a vaccine quickly, Hollings said.
The company would contract various parts of the project to different Kiwi organisations, rather than try to set up labs and staff them within 12 months – by which time the company hoped to be running human trials.
‘‘It’s a big challenge and it’s also time constrained. You’re trying to do so much in so little time.’’
Working 20 hours a week in term time at Waimea College, with two young children, had afforded a ‘‘nice balance’’.
The new role, including travel to contractors, would be ‘‘completely different’’, Hollings said. ‘‘But it’s such an awesome opportunity and such a good challenge. And a worthwhile cause.’’