Posted by Michael Wonder on 23 Apr 2020
The race to find a COVID-19 vaccine
23 April 2020 - The sum of £42.5 million is a lot to pay for a small sliver of protein.
“Small”, in fact, does not do justice to the active ingredient in the Imperial and Oxford vaccines, both of which have been backed with funding by Britain’s Health Secretary.
The human cell that coronavirus infects is a fraction of a millimetre across. The virus that does the infecting is far smaller still: a millionth the cell’s volume. On the outside of that virus there are packets of protein, smaller yet, that form a crown of spikes, the “corona”. It is one of those spikes that each of the two vaccines is trying to make.
