Coronavirus vaccine: Imperial College jab could be available for £3 per person

Researchers making use of new RNA technology that would allow vaccine to be manufactured on mass but affordable scale

A Covid-19 vaccine that is being developed by scientists at Imperial College London could be made available to the British population for as little as £3 per person.

The university is working on one of two bids in the UK to develop a form of immunisation against coronavirus, along with Oxford University’s Jenner Institute.

Robin Shattock, a professor of mucosal infection and immunity at Imperial College, and his team of researchers are making use of RNA technology that would allow the vaccine to be manufactured on a mass but affordable scale.

The Imperial College vaccine, which takes a “small portion” of genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, delivers instructions to the body’s muscle cells to make the “spike” protein seen on the surface of coronavirus.

In theory, the presence of this protein will provoke an immune response and the production of antibodies, thereby offering protection against Covid-19.

There is no need to grow the live virus when manufacturing an RNA vaccine, making it safer to manufacture. And importantly, only small quantities of the pathogen – a thousandth of a thousandth of a gram of its genetic coding, or RNA – are used for gene sequencing and vaccine testing.

A litre’s worth would therefore provide enough material for 200 million people, according to Professor Shattock. “It really is a tiny dose,” he told The Times. “That’s very good from a safety point of view but also in terms of production — it makes it much easier to scale up.

He estimates that enough vaccine could be made for the UK for around £200 million. “That’s roughly £3 for each person to be immune, assuming it works. That’s really good value.”

Researchers believe that two shots will be needed to provide immunity against Covid-19.

Whereas Oxford University has licensed its vaccine to pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca to help scale-up manufacturing, the Imperial College team will produce their vaccine as part of the joint social enterprise VacEquity Global Health (VGH), in partnership with Morningside Ventures investment firm.

Imperial and VGH will waive royalties for the UK and low-income countries “and charge only modest cost-plus prices to sustain the enterprise’s work, accelerate global distribution and support new research”, the university said.

Professor Shattock’s team is continuing to rely on public funding for its research. Last month, it received £18.5m from the government for trials and manufacturing, and a further £5m has come from philanthropic sources.

“We’ve already kind of put everything in place to be able to use for the UK and we hope that the government will act on wanting to purchase that, and we’re working with other partners around the world do that,” Professor Shattock told The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday.

“We have a very different model to AstraZeneca. If you like we want to be almost the Microsoft of the vaccine world where we make the genetic code, we pass that to other manufacturers and give them a sub licence so that they can then use their hardware to manufacture the vaccine in different parts of the globe.”

While the Oxford vaccine has already entered into the latter stages of the clinical pathway, researchers at Imperial started their own human trials on Monday.

A further trial involving 6,000 people is planned for October and if these prove successful, Imperial hopes the vaccine could be distributed in the UK and abroad early next year.

Professor Shattock said his team’s vaccine would not be available by Christmas but “in the first two quarters of next year if things go extraordinarily well”.

“At the moment there is a lot of speculation and we really need to deal with facts and data rather than over-promising and under-delivering,” he told the Royal Society of Medicine last week.

Professor Shattock said that his team had been collaborating with scientists at Oxford University in sharing data and results.

“We are often pitted against each other or seen to be in a race against each other, but actually we are collaborating very closely, exchanging material, and the two approaches may well be able to be used together, in a prime/boost [primary and booster jab] approach,” he said.

“We are not trying to beat each other. We are trying to work together and make a vaccine available in the fastest possible time.”