IS A PILL THE NEXT BREAKTHROUGH?

A small biotech firm in West Sussex is working on putting a Covid vaccine into a simple pill. This would revolutionise vaccination efforts, eliminating the need for complicated logistics to deliver fragile vials and for armies of healthcare workers and volunteers to do the inoculations. IosBio, which is based in Burgess Hill, has developed a method of putting vaccines into pill form and is working with a US firm that has made an injectable vaccine that is going through human trials. The two companies have put this vaccine into a pill and shown it to be effective in tests on monkeys.