well I'm joined now by Professor Robin
Shattuck from the department of
infectious diseases at Imperial College
here in London thank you for joining us
now lots of talk about how this can be
contained but let's talk about a cure
because you've been working on a
potential vaccine tell us more about
that yes so one of the really good news
parts of scientific endeavors in this
space is that the scientists in Wuhan
shared the genetic sequence of this
virus really very quickly and that's
allowed people around the world to
access that and start designing vaccines
and we're one of a number of groups
globally that are using that information
to put into a vaccine candidate as
quickly as possible we're working it on
those in the laboratory and we'll have
it in animal models by the middle of
next month
that's quite a speed I imagine vaccines
don't come about this quickly usually no
I mean if you put it if you contrast' it
with the Ebola vaccine that we've heard
a lot about recently that took 10 years
to develop before it even went into
human studies and then it took 2 years
to test within humans we've kind of
changed the technology and other groups
as well to use genetic sequence to
engineer a vaccine so it can be injected
into your muscle and Express just a part
of the virus to induce an immune
response we could accelerate that into
human studies we're called upon to do
that within a matter of months but in
layman's terms how do you go about
creating a vaccine I mean what are the
steps that you need to take right so
there are several different approaches
to developing a vaccine the approach
that we are developing because it's the
fastest approach is to use the genetic
code that encodes a proportion of the
vaccine what we call the envelope spike
and that's the part of the virus that
antibodies latch on to and prevent it
from infecting cells now there are other
more complex ways of making vaccines
that might give you a longer term immune
response and people are working on those
as well the real factor here is time it
takes time to do this we can get to
humans within a matter of
but that's just to check for safety and
immunogenicity start testing whether it
works will probably not happen until
this coming winter and then it may be
globally available okay so the key
question there is what if the outbreak
is controlled by then so if it's
controlled by then that's good news I
mean essentially we hope that it will be
controlled by the steps that the Chinese
government is taking in place and that
will be good news
but we also need contingency in case
it's not controlled and it becomes a
global pandemic and you said that you're
not the only kind of group working on a
vaccine how does how does this industry
work you've got a problem the
authorities release information is it
then a industrial race to see who can
create this vaccine well it it works a
little bit like that I mean there are
certainly groups like my own group who
are already prepared to look for
outbreak infections and step up to the
mark there are a number of commercial
companies that are also interested in
doing this but not because of profit
margins there's probably no profit to be
made in an outbreak infection it's all
about speed and making it available so
it's more due to humanitarian
considerations okay and just what's the
key question that you've been asking as
an expert in terms of vaccine
development what type of immune response
is required to give us sterilizing
protection against infection Robin a
shat up professor Robin Shattuck from
Imperial College London good to get your
expertise thank you my pleasure