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24th November 2020

Exeter Fellow Professor Cath Green helps deliver groundbreaking Covid-19 vaccine

A vial of the ChadOx vaccine

A vial of the ChadOx vaccine. Image credit: The University of Oxford / John Cairns

Exeter College Fellow Professor Catherine Green has played a leading role in creating a groundbreaking vaccine shown to be effective against Covid-19. The vaccine is the result of a collaborative effort between Oxford University and AstraZeneca. In trials it demonstrated over 70% efficacy and the potential to be 90% effective, depending on the dosing regimen followed. As well as being highly effective, the vaccine has the considerable advantages of being easy to distribute and administer and relatively inexpensive to manufacture.

Professor Green played a key role developing the vaccine, leading the efforts by the Clinical BioManufacturing Facility in Oxford to begin its production. Professor Green and her team work to transform medical products, designed by scientists at the University, to provide practical solutions, manufacturing them to a high quality to meet the standards of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. They collaborated with the Jenner Institute for Vaccine Research and the Oxford Vaccine Group to design and produce the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.

Over 23,000 people have been involved in the vaccine trial so far in the UK, Brazil and South Africa to ensure results are valid for different regions of the world and for different ethnic groups. Further trials are continuing in the United States, Kenya and Japan and Oxford University expects to have included more than 60,000 participants by the end of the year.

With the goal being to create a vaccine that helps as many people as possible around the world, the vaccine will be available on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic. AstraZeneca has agreements in place to supply three billion doses of the vaccine by the middle of next year. This offers real global potential for saving lives, including those of older adults who are most at risk from the virus.

More than 280 staff worked together to achieve this success, including over 50 academic authors and 65 nurses.

To find out more about the vaccine from the University of Oxford click here. You can also hear Professor Green talk about the development of the vaccine in the BBC Panorama episode, The Race for a Vaccine, available to watch in the UK on iPlayer or read Professor Green’s comments on the BBC website.

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