Sarah Gilbert

Dame Sarah Catherine Gilbert DBE FRS (born April 1962) is an English vaccinologist who is a Professor of Vaccinology at the University of Oxford and co-founder of Vaccitech. She specialises in the development of vaccines against influenza and emerging viral pathogens. She led the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine, which underwent clinical trials in 2011.

In January 2020, she read a report on ProMED-mail about four people in China suffering from a strange kind of pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan. Within two weeks, a vaccine had been designed at Oxford against the new pathogen, which later became known as COVID-19. On 30 December 2020, the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine she co-developed with the Oxford Vaccine Group was approved for use in the UK. More than 3 billion doses of the vaccine were supplied to countries worldwide.

Sarah Catherine Gilbert was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire. Her father was an office manager for a shoemakers and her mother was a primary school teacher. Gilbert attended Kettering High School for Girls, where she realised that she wanted to work in medicine. She earned nine O-Levels with six A grades. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in biological sciences from the University of East Anglia (UEA) in 1983. While at UEA she began playing the saxophone, which she would practise in the woods around the UEA Broad so as not to disturb others in her halls.

She moved to the University of Hull for her doctoral degree, where she investigated the genetics and biochemistry of the yeast Rhodosporidium toruloides, graduating with a PhD in 1986.

After earning her doctoral degree, Gilbert worked as a postdoctoral researcher in industry at the Brewing Industry Research Foundation before moving to the Leicester Biocentre. In 1990, Gilbert joined Delta Biotechnology, a biopharmaceutical company that manufactured drugs in Nottingham. In 1994, Gilbert returned to academia, joining the laboratory of Adrian V. S. Hill. Her early research considered host–parasite interactions in malaria. She became a University lecturer in 1999 and she was made a Reader in Vaccinology at the University of Oxford in 2004.

She was made Professor at the Jenner Institute in 2010. With the support of the Wellcome Trust, Gilbert started work on the design and creation of novel influenza vaccinations. In particular, her research considers the development and preclinical testing of viral vaccinations, which embed a pathogenic protein inside a safe virus. These viral vaccinations induce a T cell response, which can be used against viral diseases, malaria and cancer.

Gilbert was involved with the development and testing of the universal flu vaccine. Unlike conventional vaccinations, the universal flu vaccine did not stimulate the production of antibodies, but instead triggers the immune system to create T cells that are specific for influenza. It makes use of one of the core proteins (nucleoprotein and matrix protein 1) inside the Influenza A virus, not the external proteins that exist on the outside coat.

As the immune system weakens with age, conventional vaccinations are not effective for elderly. The universal flu vaccine does not need to be reformatted every year and stops people from needing a seasonal flu vaccine. Her first clinical trials, which were in 2008, made use of the Influenza A virus subtype H3N2, and included daily monitoring of the patient's symptoms. It was the first study that demonstrated that it was possible to stimulate T cells in response to a flu virus, and that this stimulation would protect people from getting the flu. Her research has demonstrated that the adenoviral vector ChAdOx1 can be used to make vaccinations that are protective against Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in mice and able to induce immune response against MERS in humans. The same vector was also used to create a vaccine against Nipah which was effective in hamsters (but never proven in humans), in addition to a potential vaccine for Rift Valley Fever that was protective in sheep, goats, and cattle (but not proven in humans).