On January 25, 2020, Australia confirmed its first case of coronavirus. The news was met with uncertainty and anxiety. But a mere three days later, a very low key announcement brought the first good news in the nation’s battle with the virus: Melbourne’s Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity became the world's first scientific lab outside of China to copy the virus. It was described as a "game changer" that would assist in the development of accurate test kits and help scientists determine whether a future vaccine is effective.
ABC.net.au Report, updated February 1:
The team of scientists grew the virus from a patient who had been infected since Friday.
The ABC [with cameras and crew] was in the lab the moment scientists discovered they had successfully grown the virus, with Mike Catton, the co-deputy director of the Doherty Institute, confirming it with three words.
"We got it," he said. "Fantastic."
They wasted no time in sharing their discovery with WHO which then became the sharepoint for labs worldwide — including a lab at the University of Queensland where the rush was on to develop a vaccine in record time.
ABC.net.au Report, January 24:
Dr Daniel Watterson, a senior research fellow at UQ [University of Queensland], said the rush was on to develop a vaccine.
"We've built this technology specifically for this type of response, so we're quite confident we can actually target this type of pathogen," Dr Watterson said.
The aim is to create a vaccine in just four months, with delivery of the vaccine then dependent on international agencies.
Dr Watterson went onto say, "We're really under the pump now to see whether we can deliver" — and deliver they did, in record time as promised.
On February 21, the University of Queensland announced:
A University of Queensland team has met a key milestone in their fast-tracked research to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, COVID-19.
In just three weeks, the team of researchers has created their first vaccine candidate in the laboratory and will move immediately into further development before formal pre-clinical testing.
It was a stunning announcement, all the more so when they added that
Vaccine Pipeline from The University of Queensland on Vimeo.
While some of the pre-clinical testing will be carried out at other government centres — including Australia’s national science agency, the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) — the UQ team are not resting on their laurels. They’re determined to stay on the fast-track as they work towards their objective of beginning clinical trials around the middle of the year.
Now that’s big news BUT not the biggest news. That was to come four weeks later, this week in fact, on St Patrick’s Day. Same state educational institution but different research team.
While Dr Watterson’s vaccine team was one of several international groups engaged by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) to work on the coronavirus project, another University of Queensland team had a far more unusual origin.
Their research was actually initiated by Australia’s first coronavirus patients, Australia-Chinese patients who insisted on showing their doctors information on the internet about the treatment used overseas.
In spite of considerable medical scepticism, they were prescribed the medication and the effects were astounding. That led to the formation of a research team to conduct laboratory tests.
News.com.au, March 17:
University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research director Professor David Paterson told news.com.au today they have seen two drugs used to treat other conditions wipe out the virus in test tubes.
Why were they able to treat human patients before trialing it in test tubes? It’s because the drugs have already undergone and passed clinical trials, many years ago. The older of the two is chloroquine, a rarely-used treatment for malaria. The other is an early HIV medication which has since been superseded by more effective drugs.
Additional advantages to using existing medications: both are registered in Australia, readily available to medical facilities and have a known history of being very well tolerated with no unexpected side effects.
Taken orally in tablet-form, the two medications are a formidable weapon in the war on coronavirus and they’re about to go into full battle-mode.
“What we want to do at the moment is a large clinical trial across Australia, looking at 50 hospitals, and what we’re going to compare is one drug, versus another drug, versus the combination of the two drugs,” Prof Paterson said.
The nationwide trial is scheduled to begin at the end of this month with patients being enrolled on admittance to hospital so treatment can begin immediately.
“And that way, if we can test it in this first wave of patients, we do fully expect that there are going to be ongoing infections for months and months ahead, and therefore we’ll have the best possible information to treat subsequent patients,” Prof Paterson said.
Because “patients would end up with no viable coronavirus in their system at all after the end of therapy,” Prof Paterson says it is not a stretch to refer to the treatment as a cure.
“That’s reassuring … that we’re onto something really good here.”