Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute (Nuffield Department of Medicine), has become a Fellow of the Royal Society for his leading role in the design and development of new vaccines for globally important infectious diseases over the course of over 25 years.
One of his most important developments has been the spin out of Vaccitech, which he co-founded in 2016, to capitalise on the discovery of ChAdOx. The chimp cold virus, ChAdOx, became a weapon of choice against what the World Health Organization called “Disease X” – a hypothetical future pathogen with epidemic or pandemic potential.
ChAdOx is a viral vector which safely mimics viral infection in human cells and elicit antibody and T cell responses to pathogens and tumours. Thus far, ChAdOx has already been applied in cancers (prostate), malaria, and most recently, the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine for Sars-Cov-2.
Through his work, Professor Hill has demonstrated the applications of adenoviruses in immunisation regimes supporting new vaccination approaches for a variety of disease, many of which have previously not had treatment options available.
Professor Hill becomes one of 6 new Oxford researchers to join the Royal Society. Read about them here.