Porton Down is one of the UK’s most secretive scientific research centers with a clear goal: to stop the next pandemic.
After passing the strict security controls of the remote facility, he was able to access the scientists there.
Porton Down is headquartered in the brand new Center for Vaccine Evaluation and Development.
Their work is focused on the response to COVID-19, with the aim of saving lives and minimizing the need for lockdowns when new diseases emerge.
“Certainly, coronavirus is not an isolated incident,” said Professor Jenny Harries, executive director of the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which runs the labs.
“We say this is the biggest public health event in a century, but I don’t think any of us think that the next event will be another hundred years away,” he added.
The combination of climate change, urbanization and people living near animals – a source of new diseases that can be transmitted to humans – has led to “an elevated risk,” he said.
“Disease X”
Porton Down, in the quiet Wiltshire countryside near Salisbury, is one of the few places in the world capable of studying some of the worst viruses and bacteria.
The refrigerators here contain disease-causing agents such as the Ebola virus.
One of its neighboring buildings is the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, part of the Ministry of Defence, where the Novichok nerve agent was confirmed to have been used in the poisoning of a Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury in 2018.
Vaccine labs are in dark green buildings, hastily built in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, as the pandemic receded, the focus changed.
The new vaccine research center focuses on three categories of threats:
Known infections that are increasingly difficult to treat, such as superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics.
Potential threats that can cause problems, such as bird flu and new coronavirus variants.
Then there’s “Disease X,” something unforeseen, like the coronavirus, that takes the world by surprise.
From COVID-19 to Bird Flu
The goal is to work with the pharmaceutical industry, scientists and doctors to help at all stages of vaccine development.
Scientists at Porton Down are working on the first vaccine against Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, which is transmitted by ticks and kills about a third of those it infects.
The disease has been found in Africa, the Balkans, the Middle East and Asia; and may spread further with climate change.
At the other end of the process, vaccine efficacy is assessed. It was at this location that scientists discovered that the Omicron variant can bypass some of the protection of the new crown vaccine.
The new coronavirus variants are still being studied by growing them in the lab, exposing them to antibodies taken from blood samples and testing whether they can still infect.
Meanwhile, the machines, informally known as Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, BB8, and Palpatine, form the front lines monitoring the threat of the world’s worst bird flu outbreak.
The H5N1 virus has decimated bird populations and routine testing by bird staff has uncovered the first asymptomatic case in the UK.
The difference is that before the outbreak, the team here could only analyze 100 samples a week, but now it has more than 3,000.
faster shooting
Efforts at the site are focused on the “100-day mission,” an ambitious strategy to develop vaccines against new threats in as little as 100 days.
Designing and testing new vaccines has historically taken a decade. The unique circumstances of the pandemic have allowed a COVID-19 vaccine to be produced within a year, with the first doses due to arrive in December 2020.
These vaccines are estimated to have saved more than 14 million lives within the first 12 months of use.
“Imagine if they had come to market earlier,” said UKHSA chief scientific officer Professor Isabel Oliver.
“They’re starting to be applied faster than at any point in history, even though we could have saved more lives and returned to normal sooner.”
Hopefully the lessons of the pandemic will make us better prepared next time.
Professor Harris explained that in the past we had only reacted to events, but in the future we must be at the forefront, “trying to stop” any epidemic before it starts.
If a new disease emerges, we must “stop it” early on, he added.
(BBC News World Health and Science Correspondent, via Porton Downs).
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