Professor Anne Osbourn is bringing global attention to the fragile supply of one of the world’s most important vaccine ingredients.
HotHouse Therapeutics’ co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Professor Anne Osbourn, is helping shine a spotlight on a pressing global challenge: how we source vaccine ingredients. The Chilean soap bark tree produces QS-21, a potent adjuvant found in vaccines for malaria, shingles and COVID-19. But supplies rely on bark stripped from trees that take decades to mature, raising questions about sustainability and resilience in the face of rising demand. Anne’s research highlights not only the promise of QS-21 but also the potential of novel plant chemistry. As she told The Observer: “If you can unlock the chemical engineering capability of plants, you can get to a whole swathe of chemistry that hasn’t been accessed before.”
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