In the midst of coronavirus pandemic, the only ray of hope for mankind is a vaccine against the deadly virus. Recently, India’s Serum Institute gave a hint of optimism in our battle against the coronavirus.
India’s Serum Institute announced that it was going to start manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines, which are currently under human trials at Oxford University, and sell them at Rs 1,000 in September if human trials are successful.
Even The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) backs the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine and they’re closely monitoring the progress of the “ChAdOx1 adenovirus” vaccine.
While the whole world is praying for this vaccine’s success, we want to thank Sarah Catherine Gilbert. She is a vaccinologist and a professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford, and with her team of researchers has been working relentlessly to end the COVID-19 pandemic.
Interested in the field of medicine since her high school, Sarah graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Biological Sciences from the University of East Anglia and later completed her doctoral degree from the University of Hull, England.
Coronawarrior Sarah has been working with novel influenza vaccinations, specifically the development and preclinical testing of viral vaccinations. She was also involved in the development of the universal flu vaccine that triggered the immune system to create T cells that specifically affect influenza.
Sarah Gilbert’s work on COVID-19 vaccine
As soon as China released the full genome sequence of COVID-19 (on January 10), Sarah, along with her team started working on the vaccine. For the development of the coronavirus vaccine, she implemented her research that has already been proven successfully against MERS coronavirus in mice.
The work on the vaccine started in January and now after 3 months of extremely hard work, the vaccine is currently being trialed on humans. The first phase of trials involve 550 participants and will be given the vaccine dubbed ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, whereas 550 others are given a control vaccine against meningitis and sepsis for comparison.
Professor Sarah has also shared her confidence in the vaccine’s success, stating,
“Personally, I have a high degree of confidence. This is my view, because I’ve worked with this technology a lot, and I’ve worked on the MERS vaccine trials, and I’ve seen what that can do.”
Around the world, there are currently almost 70 vaccines under development to fight COVID-19. But the Oxford vaccine that Sarah Gilbert worked on is holding the most promise as of now.
At IFORHER, we are proud of Sarah and hope her hard work goes as planned and we would have a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as September this year.