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Audio Interview

Imperial College London’s saRNA Vaccine - COVAC1

Published on October 25, 2020   12 min

A selection of talks on Pharmaceutical Sciences

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Interviewer: Doctor Pollock, thank you very much for taking the time today for this interview on Imperial College London's RNA vaccine. Could you please give an overview on the molecular basis of the vaccine, and therefore, how it works? . Pollock: Thank you for inviting me to talk about the imperial College COVID-19 vaccine program today. It's an honour to be here. I'd like to tell you about the design of the vaccine first of all. We're using a molecular vaccine which adopts a self-amplifying RNA design. What that means is that we're using a molecule of RNA, which once it enters into the cell, can be amplified and increase the potency of the vaccine. The way that works is quite complex, but I can break it down into several different steps. This is part of a wider global push to really improve the work that's previously been done in molecular vaccinology and really test the boundaries of this technology in order to deliver new vaccines that can respond rapidly to pandemics. The way that self-amplifying RNA works is that once inside the cell, it encodes for a protein replicon which is derived from an alphavirus. That allows the vaccine itself to be replicated, so you get more copies than just the few that you initially received from the vaccine. At the same time, within the vaccine,
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Imperial College London’s saRNA Vaccine - COVAC1

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