SCIENTISTS in Oxford have been given government cash to work with an Australian company on the development of a new coronavirus vaccine which could be available next year.

Headington Bio-technology organisation Oxford Expression Technologies (OET) has received the grant from Innovate UK, part of the UK Research and Innovation, to fund a partnership with Vaxine, which developed the world’s first swine flu vaccine in 2009,

The size of the grant has not been revealed, but will be used for work on a so-called Covax-19 vaccine, which has been developed by Vaxine.

OET – a collaboration between Oxford Brookes University and the Natural Environment Research Council – provides products, services and consultancy to the global pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. It is based in Gipsy Lane.

The vaccine involves research involving insect cells.

Prof Linda King, Professor of Virology at Oxford Brookes University and co-founder of OET said: “Effective vaccines against Covid-19 are desperately needed to allow all our lives go back to normal and OET is delighted to be assisting Vaxine with Covax-19.”

OET’s chief, Prof Robert Possee said: “It is a great opportunity to be able to use our knowledge of insect cell expression systems to help the Vaxine team with their Covid-19 vaccine. Insect cell systems offer many benefits including safety, high yields and low costs and allow rapid vaccine strain changes in the event the virus mutates.”

Prof Nikolai Petrovsky, Research Director of Vaxine, said: “Vaxine’s focus is always on vaccine safety and tolerability, as well as effectiveness.

“The insect cell protein expression system offers the best safety and tolerability and that was why we chose it for production of our Covax-19 vaccine. We are hoping to make our Covax-19 globally available and this UK Innovate grant will now accelerate this process.”

Arnaud Mallevre, an Advisory Board Member of Vaxine; said: “Covax-19 shows extraordinary promise, combining effectiveness, safety and tolerability”

Clinical trials will take place in the UK. Commercial sales are expected to begin in early 2021.