Led by Professor Teresa Lambe
(photo John Cairns)
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the risks to human health of outbreak pathogens. The painstaking work done by BRC vaccine experts on another coronavirus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), was critical to the rapid development of the ChAdOx1nCoV-19 (Oxford-AstraZeneca) vaccine in 2020.
We are developing our portfolio of vaccines against bacterial and viral pathogens to enable us to respond to future outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics.
Our programme includes the development of vaccines against:
- bacteria, such as plague and melioidosis (Whitmore’s disease) and
- viruses, such as Lassa fever, Nipah virus, MERS, Rift Valley fever virus, Crimean-Congo haemorrhagic fever, Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease.
Our programme also involves the evaluation of vaccination regimens and understanding the immune response to vaccines or infection that is required to give a person protection from future infection (correlates of protection).
The LEGACY03 trial examines immune responses in the lymph nodes, small, but vital organs that play a key role in fighting infections and in making responses to vaccines. The study compares responses to flu and COVID-19 vaccines between younger and older adults, with the goal of uncovering insights that could lead to better, more tailored vaccines.