SCIENTISTS working on the vaccine “the world is waiting for” are hoping animals successfully tested on do not start showing side-effects in the coming weeks.

Dr Anna Blakney is one of eight researchers in Imperial College’s laboratory that has this week secured a £22.5million funding boost from the government to ramp-up its work.

She said trials on animals since early February were a success and clinical trials on humans can begin as early as June, but only if the animals show it is safe to do so.

Dr Blakney said: “We are still doing pre-clinical animal testing and we have had really positive results from that. Our first mouse studies are finishing up and the next step is to make sure there is no safety side effects associated with the vaccine in animals. Once that is wrapped-up, we can start our phase one clinical trial. That is set to commence in June of this year.”

Speaking in a podcast on the Imperial College website, she said the aim was to “inhibit the outbreak [of coronavirus] growing more and more” and it was important to include “as many people as possible” in the clinical trials.

Dr Blakney said: “We were initially going to do 30 people, we are now going to do 120 people. We are trying to include as many people in our clinical trials. The idea is to try and vaccinate as many people as possible and have an effect on the population before it is a licensed vaccine. We’ve talked about trying to do 5,000 people in phase two, and possibly up to 2.5million in phase three if we are able to actually do that.”

She said that it was a “really, really exciting” time right now for her team, adding: “It is a positive way to impact humanity. That’s the motivation of the team. It’s been a weird time. All of Imperial is shut down except for key workers.

“There are eight people in our lab that are key workers. It’s weird, coming in, only a few people working, it feels like kind of a ghost-town which is odd. It’s so quiet out, it’s eerie.”

The government ann­oun­ced this week that it was pumping £22.5million to fast-track Imperial’s research into an RNA vaccine, which is led by Professor Robin Shattock.

RNA vaccines work by triggering the production of antibodies that “bind to potential pathogens”, ultimately boosting the immune system to stifle the virus.

Professor Alice Gast, president of Imperial College London, said: “The success of Robin Shattock and his Imperial team in designing a self-amplifying RNA vaccine from a piece of genetic code and moving to human trials within six months is incredible.

“The government’s inv­est­ment is very welcome and appropriate.

“This work offers hope for the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic and is a promising way forward to curtail future emerging disease threats. We are grateful for the ability to combine philanthropic and government support to scale up and accelerate this vital work.”

Prof Shattock added: “We are working as fast as we can to determine the vaccine’s efficacy and to get to a position where millions or billions of the vaccine can be manufactured rapidly.”