Jenner Institute’s Corona Breakthrough May Put British Efforts on Top  

The rapid spread of the coronavirus pandemic across the world and the way it has paralysed the way of life as we know is unprecedented. An event of similar magnitude was perhaps the Spanish flu which probably very few of us would remember. In the initial days of this pandemic, there was a rush to find a medicine that could treat this viral illness, but as months passed and the understanding of the virus increased, it is now becoming more and more apparent that it is a vaccine that would become the ultimate weapon against this virus. In the initial days when the virus had not spread out as widely as it has today, countries were scrabbling for medicines like Hydroxychloroquine and Remdesivir as the potential silver bullet against this virus. However, as time passed, none of these medicines or combination of medicines was fully able to fight against the virus but was only partially effective. Moreover, it was also observed that fatality rate among the infected persons was low compared to other coronaviruses induced epidemic like SARS and MERS, meaning that our immune systems were mostly able to fight off this virus albeit with some aid at times. However, where this disease stands out compared to its cousins SARS and MERS is its virulence and the incredible pace at which it has been able to spread itself across the world and overwhelming to the healthcare systems. As nearly five months have passed after the virus has set foot into this world, it is now clear that an effective vaccine is a right approach to effectively tackle this virus and getting back to the old way of life. There are several countries and research teams which are currently leading that effort and are promising an effective product in a very short span of time.

Billions of dollars’ worth of resources have been poured in towards this effort in a very short span of time. Governments, inter-governmental, international healthcare organisations as well as large and small pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies are supporting multilateral efforts to bring in an early candidate with which majority of the world population can be vaccinated at the earliest. The biggest problem however, in all this effort is the process of vaccine development, a successful vaccine takes anywhere between five to eight years to fully develop and be ready to be safely administered on humans. There are multiple trial stages that this vaccine must go through before its efficacy and safety can be proven, these stages, ranging from animal testing to controlled human trials with sufficient time given to see how the human body reacts, it the vaccine provides long term protection and if it has any unintended side effects. Only after these parameters have been reached that a national or international health agency certifies its human use. Clearly, in the case of the current pandemic, we do not have that much time, because during that period the world we live in would have gone by several centuries at least.

In the United Kingdom, one of the most promising efforts in the world is being carried out. The University of Oxford’s Jenner Institute is leading an effort from as early as January of this year to find a vaccine for the viral illness. The University has produced a vaccine which currently has been given the code name ChAdOx1 nCovid-19, which has shown promising results in its first trials on chimpanzees. It has been shown that the chimpanzees when they were vaccinated with this vaccine did not show their lungs getting damaged by this virus nor was this virus able to replicate there, however, it continued to multiply in their throat cavity. Encouraged by this finding, the institute has now advanced it into a second stage where it is experimenting on 1000 humans to see if this success can be replicated there. The institute has already tied up with several international pharmaceutical majors like AstraZeneca and the Serum Institute of India apart from other manufacturers in China and Europe to manufacture millions of doses of this vaccine even before it completes its trials process. The company and its partners are so confident of its success that they have already spent millions from their pocket to conserve time before it can be distributed to affected countries. In a recent statement, regarding the progress of the vaccine in the trials process, director of Oxford’s Jenner Institute, Adrian Hill stated that till now hurdle has been encountered in the trails process and that he expects the process to be complete as per the schedule and the vaccine reaching the masses soon after that. The institute had earlier given a timeline of September of this year before which they will be able to prove its efficacy and safety, till now no rescheduling of that timeline has been done by the institute.

One of the important aspects of this vaccine development process by the Jenner institute is to make the vaccine affordable. Given the amount of money being spent by the government and non-governmental organisations, the anxiety over the public healthcare emergency among governments world over is clearly visible. It is also to be noted here that billions of people around the world would have to be vaccinated in a very short span of time if the threat of this virus must be reduced drastically. In this regard, the research team at the Jenner Institute has assured that the vaccine will be cheap and easily manufactured and that the institute is more guided by humanitarian motives in the development of this vaccine than a profit motive. There are several other vaccine candidates around the world that are at various stages of development, but the Oxford University Jenner Institute candidate is among a handful of front runners who are far ahead of the others and promise to bring an early end to the destruction this virus has unleashed in the world.

Many of the most populated and advanced countries in the world are in a virtual lockdown. The economies in these countries are deteriorating fast, and the conditions of famine are fast approaching in many parts of the world. There has never been a vaccine in the world being awaited with so much anticipation as the vaccine for the coronavirus pandemic. Should the Jenner Institute trials be successful with no major setback, it will not only be a victory of medical science but also of the resilience of humankind.