Oxford University takes aim at future pandemic threats

Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute, launched Tuesday, aims to reduce the risks posed by infectious diseases by improving data collection, strengthening surveillance and helping to create vaccines and other countermeasures.

Bloomberg

July 05, 2022 / 10:30 IST

The University of Oxford, one of the first to cross the finish line with a Covid-19 vaccine, is shifting its focus to health threats that could trigger the next pandemic.

Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute, launched Tuesday, aims to reduce the risks posed by infectious diseases by improving data collection, strengthening surveillance and helping to create vaccines and other countermeasures. Oxford said the organization will seek to learn from the response to Covid and take advantage of the university’s research and global partnerships. But it will have to bring in additional funds to carry out its mission.

“We need to fill the gaps, and we need to identify the bottlenecks and remove them,” Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford scientist who led the development of the Covid shot, said in an interview. “We want to capitalize on that and bring it together so that we don’t find ourselves with the same lack of preparedness we had in 2020.”

The institute, which hoped to attract more than £500 million ($605 million) in investment when it was unveiled last year, has so far raised about £100 million, she said. Oxford’s initiative joins organizations such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the World Health Organization’s pandemic intelligence hub in a broader effort to respond to outbreaks and prevent them from exploding into global emergencies.

One priority is overcoming a lack of larger-scale vaccine manufacturing capacity globally, Gilbert said. Oxford’s Covid vaccine partner, AstraZeneca Plc, transferred technology to multiple sites around the world, but that still takes time, she said. In the future, every continent, especially Africa, and every region will need to be able to produce big quantities of vaccines, she said.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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