Who is Sarah Gilbert - The "mother" of the AstraZeneca vaccine giving up the opportunity to earn millions of dollars to save the world?

Overcoming difficulties and challenges on the way of scientific research, Sarah Gilbert and her colleagues have successfully invented the Oxford/Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccine.

This is a success and a great hope to contribute to ending the pandemic.

Almost gave up on science, career interrupted because of having 3 children

On November 23, 2020, the University of Oxford and its partner AstraZeneca announced important information to the world: the Covid-19 vaccine they jointly produced was 70-90% effective in late-stage clinical trials. . This gives hope to millions of people around the world. As of August 16, according to Wego Travel Blog statistics, the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been approved for use in 121 countries and territories.

And while the prices of other vaccines on offer are not less than $10/dose ($Novavax $16/dose, Pfizer $19.5/dose, Moderna 32-$37/dose, Sinopharm $20-30/dose) The price of Astra Zeneca vaccine is only 3-4$/dose.

Few people know that this would not have been possible without a woman with three children named Sarah Gilbert. She is currently a professor of vaccines at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford.

Professor Sarah Gilbert - co-inventor of AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine

Professor Sarah Gilbert was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire in April 1962. Neither of her parents studied STEM fields.

Ms. Gilbert earned a bachelor's degree in biology from the University of East Anglia and then went on to study for a doctorate in biochemistry and genetics at the University of Hull. Sharing with the media, she said that she herself always likes interdisciplinary research. As a result, she almost dropped out of university science because she felt the lack of "diversity of thought" and "tunnel-like focus".

Fortunately, after that, she continued to study in the direction of research at the university.

In 1990, she collaborated with Professor Adrian Hill, now Director of the Jenner Institute, on research on malaria vaccines. And it was this collaboration that laid the foundation for her vaccine career that began in 1994. Her efforts in malaria vaccine research have helped her hone her skills in creating recombinant viral vector vaccines. , which could trigger a positive T-cell response on its own and not rely solely on an antibody response, like most vaccines at the time.

In 1998, Mrs. Gilbert's scientific career was interrupted when she gave birth to 3 children (2 girls, 1 boy). With the salary of the couple who are both scientists, not enough to pay for their children to go to kindergarten, Gilbert's husband volunteered to sacrifice his career to take care of the children and let his wife continue her research path.

Back to Oxford and a remarkable achievement

Returning to Oxford, Sarah Gilbert became a professor at the prestigious Jenner Institute of the University of Oxford. She also quickly set up her own research team to try to create a vaccine that would be effective against all strains of the flu virus.

In 2014, she led the first trial of an Ebola vaccine. And when the MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome) outbreak broke out, she went to Saudi Arabia to develop a vaccine for this corona virus.

In early 2020, when the new MERS vaccine entered the second phase of testing, the COVID-19 epidemic appeared in China. At this point, she spent a few days monitoring the disease (then known as abnormal pneumonia). And when she learned it was caused by a corona virus, she immediately had the idea to develop another vaccine similar to the way she did with MERS.

The situation of the COVID-19 epidemic appearing in many countries around the world made Ms. Gilbert and her team realize for themselves that "it is necessary to act quickly". According to colleagues, Professor Sarah Gilbert worked from early morning until late at night, one day she worked from 4 am. Finally, just a week after Chinese scientists announced the genetic structure of the new virus, Ms. Gilbert's team has finished designing a Covid-19 vaccine - the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine.

Within 65 days, her lab created the first "batches" of the vaccine, which were then tested on volunteers while the virus was still spreading across the planet.

It is worth mentioning that her work also received the support of her children (her children all chose biochemistry at university). They volunteered to participate in the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine trial.

Giving up the opportunity to earn millions of dollars to save tens of millions of lives

The trial of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine received good results, facing the opportunity to make millions of dollars, but Mrs. Gilbert chose to give up the vaccine patent to save tens of millions of lives around the world.

"From the very beginning, we saw that this vaccine would be in a race against the virus, not against other vaccines," she said. "We work at the University and have no intention of making money off of it," she said. there".

And indeed, she gave the whole result of this vaccine research to the community, with an agreement with the famous pharmaceutical company Astra Zeneca that the vaccine would have to be distributed non-profit to the public at the real official price. Cheap, much cheaper than the market price, only about 3USD per dose.

The Star Malaysia newspaper quoted Ms. Gilbert as saying: "As the person who invented this vaccine, I can make a huge profit. But I refuse to receive the vaccine patent. I do not want to monopolize the invention because I want to share this technology so that everyone can make a vaccine."

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