The next virus pandemic threat (and what the experts are doing about it)

Two years ago the first human trials of the University of Oxford’s game-changing Covid-19 vaccine were just under way, only five months after the pandemic virus was identified. Bill Gates has hailed this super-rapid progress as “miraculous”. The scientists responsible prefer to put it down to preparation. Back then no one was even sure that a vaccine against Covid-19 could work. Now, having succeeded in creating several of them, the knowledge accrued when developing such drugs is being put to good use on new projects. In America, for instance, scientists in collaboration with BioNTech, the German firm behind the Pfizer coronavirus jab, are trialling a vaccine to treat pancreatic cancer, the deadliest common cancer, using the same mRNA technology as was used in Covid jabs.