Corner stone seminar 4: UNCOVERing COVID-19

Question 1

Why was it hard to assemble the UNCOVER research group during lockdown?

Answer 1

1. Uni shut down so needed permission to keep the labs open which took time
2. Needed more lab space to accommodate social distancing
3. Government was requisitioning lab equipment for testing
4. needed to get funding
5. ethical approval
6. staff and approve clinical trials

Question 2

How big was UNCOVER?

Answer 2

50-100 academics from across the university

Question 3

What were the disciplines involved in UNCOVER?

Answer 3

1. virology
2. aerosol science - chemistry
3. human and animal immunology
4. molecular microbiology
5. synthetic biochemistry
6. clinical studies and trials
7. population health sciences
8. physics
9. epidemiological modelling

Question 4

What made COVID hard to study?

Answer 4

1. The uni was told they couldn’t use aerosolised covid despite the importance
2. found a category 3 lab in the vet school we were allowed to used

Question 5

What did the aerosol COVID studies show?

Answer 5

how long the virus can survive in the air and its ability to infect the cells.
It lost viability quite fast.

Question 6

How were SARS-Cov-2 antibodies detected?

Answer 6

1. luciferase immunoprecipitation system - LIPS
2. ELISA

Question 7

Where did COVID antibody negative samples come from?

Answer 7

the biobank before covid

Question 8

Mucosal antibody detection

Answer 8

1. non-invasive sampling
2. permits serial studies with high return rates
3. mucosal responses are likely to impact viral transmission = good for a vaccine

Question 9

Where will N-protein antibodies come from?

Answer 9

a natural COVID infection as all vaccine are spike proteins

Question 10

What was the ADDomer?

Answer 10

1. a candidate vaccine platform
2. a virus like particle vaccine made of protein scaffold
3. no DNA/RNA
4. no need for cold storage
5. easily scalable
6. can be engineered to have multiple epitopes

Question 11

What was good about the nasal ADDomer vaccine?

Answer 11

it had a really good IgA mucosal response

Question 12

What was good about the discovery of the oleic acid binding pocket?

Answer 12

1. Identify highly pathogenic strains
2. binding of free fatty acids can prevent covid binding to ACE-2
3. starting small scale human trials

Question 13

ChAdOx vaccine in bristol

Answer 13

1. bristol was the highest recruitment centre for the vaccine
2. had 2 trial site: BRI, southmead
3. done in lockdown so had to negotiate safe travel for staff and volunteers
4. need to prevent healthy volunteers for bringing in the virus or contracting the virus from the hospital
5. lab liaison
6. Communication and recruitment

Question 14

what was Valneva?

Answer 14

a whole virion inactivated adjuvant COVID19 vaccine

Question 15

When is it not ethical to do a randomised control trial?

Answer 15

when there are lots of vaccines available to have a no vaccine control

Question 16

What is Valneva the only of?

Answer 16

1. the only fully licensed covid vaccine ni Europe
2. the others are still only being used under emergency conditions

Question 17

what is bad about the current COVID 19 vaccine situation?

Answer 17

The big companies like Pfizer have a monopoly on the market when more effect vaccines now exist

Question 18

What were the lessons learned from the UNCOVER group?

Answer 18

1. in an emergency people are keen to cooperate
2. there are many inter-disciplinary possibilities that you don’t realise until an emergency thrusts you together
3. operational and practical challenges can be overcome when there is not an option to fail
4. The level of sustained effort from 2020-2022 is not sustainable long term despite that good outcomes