How two professors behind Oxford's Covid vaccine stand to make MILLIONS with the jab - after its troubled path to approval
- Professor Sarah Gilbert and Professor Adrian Hill stand to make millions from jab
- Scientists heralded 'ray of hope' at the end of a very challenging year
- Error in trials led to some volunteers receiving a half dose and full dose regime
- This was 90 per cent effective, compared to a 62 per cent as two full doses
- Oxford University could make millions after taking six per cent of profits
- And two professors could also become millionaires after inventing the jab
Britain today approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine, paving the way for millions to receive the jab within weeks and offering hope that the UK could be 'out' of the coronavirus crisis by the spring.
Oxford professors Sarah Gilbert and Adrian Hill - who helped develop the jab - stand to make millions of pounds through start-up Vaccitech, which created the experimental shot alongside experts at the university's Jenner Institute.
Vaccitech is a private firm which owns intellectual property used in the vaccine's development. They together own about 10 per cent of the Oxford-based company, which will benefit both from royalties from the vaccine and 'milestone' payments.
However the money can only be paid out once the pandemic is declared to have finished, according to the company's royalty agreement with Oxford.
The 'milestone' payments are negotiated amounts based on landmarks such as regulatory approval, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The firm was valued at £65.8million last year before the pandemic hit. The pair will also be entitled to their share of revenue if the Covid-19 jab is sold for profit.
Oxford University also stands to make hundreds of millions of pounds, after it secured a deal to give the institution 6 per cent of all profits.
Professor Sarah Gilbert, a vaccinologist at the University of Oxford, stands to make millions from the jab with Professor Adrian Hill, after their company Vaccitech created the jab that could help pull the world out of the pandemic
Professor Sarah Gilbert is married to fellow scientist Rob Blundell and they have triplets (from left) Susannah, Freddie and Caitlin. All three studied biochemistry at university. They were featured in the Oxford Mail in August 2017 (pictured) after achieving seven A*s, three As and a B between them in their A-levels, with Caitlin gaining four straight A*s
Professor Gilbert has previously insisted that she is not working on the vaccine for any financial reason, saying: 'We're a university and we're not in this to make money.'
But Oxford's vice chancellor Louise Richardson said the university was keen not to repeat the mistakes of 80 years ago - when it offered the revolutionary antibiotic penicillin to the world but made barely any money from its discovery.
AstraZeneca has promised not to make money on the first three billion doses — but with booster shots and the spectre of further vaccinations being needed, they could rake in hundreds of millions.
Professor Gilbert is a mother of triplets who are all now university biochemistry students aged 22 - and all three volunteered to be involved with the vaccine trial.
She had her children prematurely while working as a post-doctoral scientist, and her husband sacrificed his career to bring them up because nursery fees would have cost more than her income.
Professor Gilbert is married to fellow scientist Rob Blundell and they have two daughters, Susannah and Caitlin, who went to Oxford, and son Freddie, who went to the University of Bath.
Her parents divorced amicably after their children – including her brother Tom, 56, a country hotel manager - left home, but have both died in the past five years.
Her triplets were featured in the Oxford Mail in August 2017 after achieving seven A*s, three As and a B between them in their A-levels, with Caitlin gaining four straight A*s.
The family home is a five-bedroom house with three bathrooms in a village outside Oxford worth an estimated £620,000.
Professor Gilbert is a keen musician who played the oboe in her school orchestra and took up the saxophone while at university, which she used to play in the woods to avoid disturbing others living in rooms around her.
Her colleague Professor Hill, 62, married Sunetra Gupta, 55, a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford, in 1994.
She hit the headlines earlier this year for calling for herd immunity to fight the pandemic, saying that lockdowns were a bad idea.
The couple had two daughters, with the younger recently completing her degree during lockdown at home.
The family used to reside in a property on the outskirts of Oxford worth £660,000, but no longer live there.
Today's approval of the Oxford jab comes after a series of twists and turns in getting it over the line.
Regulators were left with a dilemma after it emerged the vaccine was 62 per cent effective when given as two full doses, yet could prevent up to 90 per cent of infections when administered as a half dose followed by a full dose.
The second dosing method, however, was based on a tiny sample size and included no-one over the age of 55 — who are most at risk from the virus.
And the scientific trial was plunged into crisis mode in September after a volunteer suffered 'transverse myelitis' — swelling in the spine. Academics behind the study dismissed the side effect as being linked to the jab but conceded that they had to pause the research to investigate the matter.
They were rocked again in October when Brazilian doctor and trial volunteer Dr João Pedro R. Feitosa, 28, died from Covid-19 after getting a jab, but it quickly emerged he was in the experimental group and did not get the vaccine.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) today approved the jab to be given as two doses between four to 12 weeks apart.
The significant gap sparked hopes that millions more people could be vaccinated quicker, allowing the UK to exit the pandemic faster.
They also approved the jab to be given as two full doses. It is thought they took this decision because there was 'too little' data available to approve it as a half dose followed by a full dose.
The MHRA's chief executive Dr June Raine told a press conference today the higher effectiveness of the half dose was not 'borne out' in analysis.
AstraZeneca and Oxford may be in a position to make hundreds of millions from the jab because it may be needed annually - like the flu jab - to give booster shots as immunity diminishes.
Their profits could be bolstered further as their vaccine is among the easiest to roll out, because it can be stored in a household fridge whereas Pfizer's needs to be kept at -70C (-94F).
The last time Oxford University saved the world from deadly infections, through its development of penicillin in 1940, it was not savvy enough to make money from it.
The deal between Oxford and Cambridge-based AstraZeneca was likely struck back in spring, but was reported in October by the Wall Street Journal.
Louise Richardson, the vice chancellor of Oxford, said the university was keen not to make the same mistakes as it did 80 years ago with penicillin.
In 1940, Oxford scientists Howard Florey and Ernst Chain proved penicillin could clear bacterial infections, leading to the world's first antibiotic.
Despite revolutionising medicine at the time, the university barely made any money from its discovery.
Oxford professors Ms Gilbert and Mr Hill also stand to get a cut from the jab, after their start-up was behind the invention.
For comparison, influenza vaccines make around £4billion profit for pharmaceutical companies every year, globally.
Several Chinese investors, including a Dutch arm of the controversial Chinese firm Huawei, also own shares in the company listed as Vaccitech's biggest funder.
It means Huawei — which has been blacklisted by the UK and US amid fears it could use its tech to spy on the West — may also gain handsomely if the Covid-19 jab is proven to work and be safe over the next few months.
It comes after it emerged that a dosing mix-up, which left regulators with a headache, happened because of a measurement blunder by Oxford University's researchers.
In May, a quality check on a vaccine delivery from a manufacturer in Italy found the chemicals were more potent than ordered, according to an investigation by Reuters.
The Italian firm, IRBM/Advent, insisted batch K.0011 contained the right concentration of vaccine after checking it using a genetic test known as quantitative PCR, which works out the amount of viral material per millilitre.
But Oxford used a different type of test that estimates the amount of viral matter based on how much ultraviolet (UV) light the material absorbed.
The university believed its method gave a more accurate measurement and so diluted the dose meaning it became a half dose batch.
The error, detailed by documents published in journal The Lancet, happened as a product mixed with the solution before it is administered interfered with the UV test, leading to an overestimate of the batch strength.
The mistake was only picked up in June, after Oxford scientists found those that received doses from batch K.0011 suffered less potent side-effects.
With the blessing of the UK's drug regulator the MHRA, they pressed ahead with the trial and gave those volunteers – and all other volunteers – full doses for the rest of the study.
The mix-up has left regulators across the world scratching their heads over whether to approve the vaccine, because it has different trial data to others.
An AstraZeneca boss said earlier this month the company would have run the trials differently if it had been in charge.
Dr Mene Pangalos told BBC Panorama: 'There is no doubt I think that we would have run the study a little bit differently if we had been doing it from scratch.
'But ultimately it is what it is and I think the Oxford group have done a fantastic job and then we've done as good a job as we possibly can to translate that into the data-set that we can provide to the regulators and to regions around the world for the approval.'
Trials were also suspended on September 9 when a volunteer was rushed to hospital with inflammation in the spinal cord.
After an assessment they were allowed to resume in the UK on September 12, but the US kept them paused for a further month.
An internal safety report revealed the British patient was diagnosed with transverse myelitis, an inflammation of a section of the spinal cord.
Oxford University also stands to rake in hundreds of millions of pounds after securing a deal with AstraZeneca giving it a six per cent cut of all profits
More than 24,000 volunteers were involved in Oxford's phase three trials in the UK and Brazil, half of which were given the vaccine and the rest were given a fake jab
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) today approved the Oxford coronavirus vaccine for people in the UK
The Oxford vaccine is a genetically engineered common cold virus that used to infect chimpanzees. It has been modified to make it weak so it does not cause illness
The condition damages the myelin sheath, an insulating barrier of fatty protein that protects the nerves, and interrupts messages sent by spinal cord nerves.
This results in pain, weakness, abnormal sensations, and problems of the bladder and bowel - and can even lead to permanent paralysis.
But according to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal regulators ruled that the vaccine did not directly cause the neurological issue but that a link between it and the shot should not be ruled out.
The death from Covid-19 of volunteer Dr Feitosa plunged the trials into further turmoil in October, after it was reported by Brazilian media.
A graph showing vaccine orders made by the EU, US, Canada, UK, Japan and Australia
Dr João Pedro R. Feitosa (pictured), a 28-year-old from Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, was confirmed to be the volunteer who died in the Brazilian arm of AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford's coronavirus vaccine trial
But newspaper Globo and news agency Bloomberg later revealed he was in the control group and had not received the Oxford vaccine, citing sources close to the trials.
Dr Feitosa had been treating Covid-19 patients since March in the emergency rooms and intensive care units at two hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, Globo said.
He graduated from medical school last year, and was in good health prior to contracting the disease, family and friends told the newspaper.
Oxford University said at the time the trials would continue after the death, adding an internal review had revealed no safety concerns.
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