Vaccination: Research

(asked on 20th January 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government which scientific advisory committees made the evaluations of which projects UK Research and Innovation should fund to support research on vaccine responses in groups of immune-supressed individuals; and who are the members of each such committee.


Answered by
Lord Callanan Portrait
Lord Callanan
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Energy Security and Net Zero)
This question was answered on 3rd February 2021

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is funding research on vaccine responses in groups of immune-supressed individuals as part of its support for the OCTAVE study in the National Core Studies (NCS) Immunity Programme. The NCS was established in October 2020, guided by an Oversight Committee, chaired by Sir Patrick Vallance (Government Chief Scientific Adviser), to increase research scale and ultimately maintain resilience against Covid-19.

The NCS Oversight Committee members are:

  • Professor Sir John Bell (Regius Chair of Medicine, University of Oxford)
  • Sir Jeremy Farrar (Director, Wellcome Trust)
  • Professor Sir Mike Ferguson (Regius Professor of Life Sciences, University of Dundee)
  • Professor Dame Anne Johnson (Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, UCL)
  • Sir Harpal Kumar (President, GRAIL Europe)
  • Professor Dame Ottoline Leyser (CEO, UKRI)
  • Dr Lynda Stuart (Lead COVID-19 Discovery and Translational Vaccine Response Team, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)
  • Professor Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer and Head of the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR))

Plus, representatives of the Devolved Administrations, NIHR and Health and Safety Executive.

Further expert insights are provided by an international panel comprising Peggy Hamburg (Chair of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science), Gagandeep Kang (Professor, Division of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College Vellore) and Gabriel Leung (Dean of Medicine, Hong Kong University).

The OCTAVE study, led by Professor Iain McInnes, University of Glasgow, has a budget of c. £2.3 million, is designed to deliver in twelve months, and is supporting research on vaccine responses in groups of immune-supressed individuals, including those with inflammatory disorders, high risk cancer patient groups, and patients with severe kidney and liver disease. Cancer patient groups include chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, myeloma, acute leukaemia, and bone marrow transplants. In addition, there are proposals on vaccine responses in high-risk clinical groups under consideration by UKRI’s Medical Research Council (MRC) as part of the UKRI COVID-19 Agile call, including in haematological cancers. These submissions will be reviewed by the MRC’s Agile Panel, which draws on members of the MRC’s Research Boards and Panels, and if supported will be coordinated with the OCTAVE study.

The Government Office for Science, acting as the NCS secretariat, establishes the formal links between the NCS and the policymakers and delivery partners in government (including No 10, Cabinet Office, Department of Health and Social Care, Public Health England and devolved equivalents, and the Joint Biosecurity Centre), ensuring that study outputs support informed policy and operational responses.

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