CEO update | 14 June 2021
I was delighted to read on Friday night that many colleagues and BIA members were rightly recognised in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2021. The headlines were dominated by Kate Bingham, former Chair of the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce (VTF) and Professor Sarah Gilbert of Oxford University who both became Dames.
There were honours for people who have been at the heart of efforts to understand the complexities of developing and scaling up COVID-19 vaccines, including Ian McCubbin, former manufacturing expert on the VTF and former chair of the BIA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Taskforce, who was awarded a CBE and our very own BIA bioprocessing consultant Annette (Netty) England who was awarded an MBE.
Kate Bingham’s incredible leadership of the VTF meant that the UK was able to procure vaccine candidates early in the summer of 2020, giving the NHS a long lead-in time to understand how to deploy vaccines rapidly once they gained approval. Ian and Netty spearheaded the UK’s work in vaccine manufacturing, working day and night to bring together industry, academia and government to assess supply chains and to understand if we had the manufacturing capability here in the UK, to support the scale up of a successful COVID-19 vaccine.
Professor Cath Green from the Clinical BioManufacturing Facility at Oxford University was awarded an OBE and Mark Proctor, Global Supply and Strategy Senior Director (Covid Vaccine) at AstraZeneca, was awarded a CBE. I was also pleased to see that many other AstraZeneca staff have received awards for their service in supporting the development of vaccines to tackle the pandemic.
Key people from the civil service also received honours, including Kristen McLeod, Director of OLS and Ruth Todd, Director of Programmes at the VTF, each receiving a CBE, while Nick Elliot former Director General of the VTF and Steve Oldfield, Chief Commercial Officer at the Department of Health, were appointed Companions, Order of the Bath (CB). Divya Manek, Clinical Trials lead at the VTF also received an OBE.
This recognition shows how the UK life sciences and biotech sector has stepped up to the global challenge of COVID-19 and was reinforced over the weekend at the G7, where the UK’s Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance presented, along with Melinda Gates, to G7 leaders on the need for a more rapid response to viruses and pathogens in their report ‘100 Days Mission for diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines to respond to future pandemic threats’.
I noted with interest the call for investment in R&D, where Sir Patrick has rightly identified the need for continued close collaboration between global governments, industry and academia which has been the foundation of the global response to COVID-19. The report sees investments of this type having dual benefits not only in vaccinations but AMR as well. One of the reasons that manufacturers were able to pivot rapidly and support vaccine manufacturing was the Government’s historic investment in advanced therapies and we hope to see additional benefits in other therapy areas through this work. It is a very ambitious report and I look forward to engaging on behalf of the sector to ensure that the UK’s capability is a key part of future global responses.
Great news from Novavax today that their COVID-19 vaccine is 93% effective against new variants and 100% effective against earlier strains of the virus. The company will now submit their vaccine to regulators with the hope that it will be approved for use later in the year.
This positive news comes against a media backdrop that the Government plans to extend England’s lockdown by another four weeks. As ever the devil will be in the detail, but the BIA will be keeping a close eye on any implications for our sector.
