Search the Community

In episode 4 of our COVID-19 Road to a vaccine series, we spoke with Professor Kanta Subbarao. Professor Subbarao has been the Director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza since 2016, based at The Doherty Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia. In episode 5 of our COVID-19 Road to a vaccine series, we spoke with Professor Terry Nolan, who is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor at the Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity. He heads up VIRGO, the vaccine and immunisation research group, a collaboration between Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the University of Melbourne. VIRGO has the largest and longest standing child and adolescent vaccine population research and clinical trials program in Australia.

In Episode 1 of our new podcast series, Associate Professor Nigel Crawford, a vaccinologist and consultant paediatrician at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) & Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH), Melbourne, talks with Stanley Plotkin, Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania; who is well known internationally for his role in vaccine development. In this episode they discuss:•Professor Plotkin’s role in the development of the rubella vaccine, still used throughout the world today •His role as the Editor in Chief of the ‘Vaccines’ textbook •His role in the formation of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI) and CEPI’s current role in global COVID-19 vaccine development •What can we learn from the H1N1 pandemic in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine? •How developing a vaccine against coronaviruses is critical to the future of civilisation as economies are being destroyed by these viruses •Human challenge models and some of the ethical considerations we need to tackle if these sorts of trials are going to be undertaken to support COVID-19 vaccine development •Success can only be achieved through global collaboration in the pursuit of a COVID-19 vaccine •How the practical aspects of distributing a vaccine on this scale have never been faced before and the importance of thinking outside the box!