Professor Sarah Catherine Gilbert
Co-Laureate of the King Faisal Prize in Medicine 2023
Topic: "Pandemics and Vaccine Development"
We are clinically testing vaccines to prevent future disease outbreaks
Sarah Catherine Gilbert received her undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences (specialising in Microbiology) from the University of East Anglia with a prize for the highest final examination marks in the School of Biological Sciences, in 1983, and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Hull in 1986. She completed post-doctoral appointments at the Brewing Research Foundation and the University of Leicester before moving to Delta Biotechnology in 1989, working on the production of recombinant human blood proteins from yeast. She moved to Oxford University in 1994, as a senior post-doctoral researcher before being appointed University Research Lecturer (1999), Reader in Vaccinology (2004), Jenner Investigator (2006) and Professor of Vaccinology (2010). In 2021 Professor Gilbert was appointed to the Saïd Chair of Vaccinology and became Head of the Outbreak Pathogens Vaccine Group in the Pandemic Sciences Institute in the Nuffield Department of Medicine at Oxford University.
Professor Gilbert’s research has been on the development of vaccines against infectious diseases, including vaccine design, preclinical and clinical assessment of vaccines produced using viral vector platform technologies. This has included the initial development of the novel simian adenoviral vectored vaccine technologies ChAdOx1 and ChAdOx2. Her research has included the development of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) manufacturing processes and assays to allow ChAdOxvectored vaccines to be produced for clinical trials. She has led projects on the clinical development of ChAdOx1-vectored vaccines against influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), with clinical trials of the latter taking place in the UK and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In 2020 Professor Gilbert initiated and led the rapid production and development of a vaccine against SARSCoV-2 (Vaxzevria) which was licensed to AstraZeneca and is now in use in over 180 countries.
Professor Gilbert was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2021 in recognition of her work during the 2020 pandemic. Her book, Vaxxers, describing the development of Vaxzevria was a Sunday Times bestseller. Other awards include the Royal Society of Medicine Gold Medal, the Princesa de Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research, 2021 and the Sunhak Peace prize 2022.
This biography was written in the year the prize was awarded.
