Leading fight to beat virus

Leading fight to beat virus

22 April 2020

A DOWNPATRICK man is leading a major initiative to produce a vaccine to halt the global spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Roger Connor, President of Global Vaccines at pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), has secured an agreement from a leading French rival to work together to find a vaccine.

The 50 year-old, who now lives and works in Belgium, is hopeful that the collaboration between tens of thousands of the world’s top vaccine scientists will result in fast-tracked human trials starting in the autumn.

GSK and the French company Sanofi want to make a vaccine available a year later if the project succeeds, making it affordable and accessible to all, particularly countries and regions that are in urgent need.

Mr Connor has pledged the full weight of his company behind the drive to find a vaccine.

A former student of St Patrick’s Grammar School in Downpatrick, Mr Connor is confident that his company will create a vaccine but he stressed that the ability to produce it safely and at scale are crucial to the overall success.

“The vaccine will be found,” Mr Connor told the Recorder. “While it will be a challenge, it’s not the normal easy research and development process. We really believe that this is about creating multiple options.

“We are joining forces to share people, technology and capability but it’s the scale of the vaccine which can be produced which is important — how much that can be made and by when.

“The great thing about GSK, which is number one in the world, and Sanofi, which is number four, coming together is that we have the comprehensive manufacturing scale and capability that is required.”

He revealed that the partnership was sealed after he reached out to the head of his French rival by telephone last month.

“When this all started in January, we started to look for partners. We have seven in total but the tie-in with Sanofi is the biggest and most significant,” explained Mr Connor.

“Myself and my counterpart in Sanofi thought we could work together and share various technologies. At the end of the call, we both came off it excited as we thought we could make it work.

“We believe that a lot of vaccines and multiple approaches are needed, because some will fail and we will need several to meet the quantity that is required.”

The agreement between the companies was made public last week.

Mr Connor said GSK had considerable experience of dealing with pandemics and had developed new vaccines for outbreaks of  swine flu and Asian flu in recent years. Consequently, Mr Connor said that GSK knows how to scale up the production of a new vaccine quickly and efficiently. 

He added: “This pandemic is unprecedented. The priority is getting vaccine scientists together to work on a vaccine and to save every day possible of its development process. We believe we can develop the vaccine and then scale it up quickly.

“I can promise everyone that our scientists are bringing great energy and motivation to finding  a vaccine that works as we all have family or friends affected by it. There is a real sense that we can make this work.”

A qualified chartered account and manufacturing engineer, Mr Connor joined GSK in 1998 and held a series of management roles before taking charge of the company’s vaccine business two years ago. He currently leads 17,000 employees.

He is the son of Mr Tommy Connor and the late Mrs Phil Connor and was raised in the Knocknashinna area of Downpatrick. HIs wife, Denise, is from Newry and the couple have two daughters, Emma (16) and Sarah (14).

His sister, Hilary Crichton, is principal of Cedar Integrated Primary School in Crossgar and he has two brothers, Colin, who is an optician living in Belfast, and David, who is head of midwifery at a London hospital.