 So access to vaccines is a big challenge and it is a major challenge in the developing world, but not only there I grew up in a town called Pasadamke, Maine Which is a very long way from anything that resembles a city. It was a remote part of the United States So we had to travel a long ways to get something like a flu shot So this is a big problem, but it becomes a bigger problem Especially the further way you get from urban centers The cold chain exists and it exists to preserve vaccines as you ship them around the world Because our manufacturing at the moment is done in a few select central locations. This creates a major distribution challenge We have to manufacture vaccines in one place and then ship them around the world at immense cost In fact today up to 80% of the cost of vaccinating a single person is due to this cold storage So the cold chain The reason the cold chain is very important is because it's our only mechanism of that distribution We have to keep the vaccine safe and effective from the point of manufacturing all the way to the point of care Now the reason the cold chain is necessary is because vaccines have enemies heat and water We have to keep the vaccines cold in order that their structure and therefore their efficacy isn't destroyed when they become warm We also have to deal with water Water is a major problem with vaccines We store vaccines in water because it's the natural media that exists for storing things like proteins Unfortunately water structure is not independent of its temperature and so over time water structure will change and there's a Radical example to make you think about this if you heat water enough it will eventually boil But not everything does this for example salts don't boil And so we had to think about how we could replace water with salts and this idea actually came From work on biofuels at Imperial College oddly enough So we found that we could stabilize the proteins used in biofuel production extremely high temperatures And the salts that we use to do this are called ionic liquids And that's because they're liquids at any temperature even when they're very dry That's it sounds really simple to use salts, but you can't use just any salts So ordinary table salt basically has no effect on stabilizing vaccines So we had to think about developing brand new salts and so we had to design these new molecules So we had to do a lot of very complicated chemistry and we had to think about how that chemistry would impact the structure of the active elements in vaccines And since I've now decided to move from working on biofuels to working on vaccines We had to think about a few extra things such as people so we don't normally eat and drink biofuels Some receptions you might get some bioethanol But we do tend to inject vaccines into people and so we had to start thinking about making sure that anything We added to the vaccine formulation would keep it safe for human use So the task in front of us was quite obvious and straightforward right all we need to do is design a safe Nontoxic brand new molecule that will keep all of these vaccine structures You know in the stable configuration at any temperature and not poison anybody So we developed our new chemistry and set about and we discovered that we needed to involve a lot of complexity So we needed a very complex set of molecules in order to do this because the vaccines active elements are Large complex structures so proteins or DNA RNA and so they need a lot of complex interactions in order to keep them safe We need complexity We also need affordability So we don't want them to cost too much and we also need them to be nontoxic So we've got this big long list right they need to be simple, but they also need to be flexible They need to be safe, but they also need to be affordable And so we had to sort of develop elements of science and engineering and medicine and put them together to make it happen And it is a success story so it does work So we have some protein formulations that are stable at room temperature on the shelf basically forever Now we have to start thinking about regulation So how can we get these things into the marketplace? Regulatory frameworks are there to protect people from mad scientist So soon it's an important thing and so our strategy was to think about things that are generally regarded as safe for human use So we looked at food and some of the molecules that exist in food So we take some bits of food molecules here and there and we stir them all together in big pot add a little bit of vinegar There you go, brand new salt You know chemistry is not magic, but it is kind of how it works And once we've gotten past sort of these regulatory issues the next step will be to start thinking about manufacturing So how will we scale these things up? How will we be able to take this new set of molecules a generic platform that we intend to be using on a large variety of vaccines and Then put them into people and so we need a lot of partnerships and a lot of help with that with companies and government agencies The vision is still intact So what I have in mind is that we will be able to store vaccines on any shelf in any hospital and any doctor's office Anywhere in the world for very long periods of time decades So we want to increase the affordability and the accessibility of vaccines everywhere in the world So you don't always have to go to a big hospital in order to get your shots. Thank you