earlier i spoke to andrew catchpole, the chief scientific officer of hvivo. he's part of the clinical company involved in the trials, and i asked him what they're looking for exactly. >> what we're trying to achieve with this very first study is to identify the smallest amount of virus possible to cause an infection. if we see no infection in the 30 subjects, we will increase that virus until we're able to establish an infection. once we've done that, we then have the models ready to use the model testing for vaccines. we'll vaccinate subjects, bring them into our quarantine unit and challenge them with the virus and see if the vaccines can prevent the infection. very important key for this demographic, the 18 to 30-year-olds are, what we know is we are expecting many of them to have asymptomatic infections. they will be infected, have the virus but no symptoms. this is the key part of the pandemic. if people don't know they're ill, they're still walking around and communicating with others and therefore transmitsing the virus. if we can make sure the vaccine

doctor catchpole, when do we... what data _ enough, yeah. doctor catchpole, when do we...ion from this stud ? ~ , . ., , study? we will start to see information _ study? we will start to see information and _ study? we will start to see information and starts i study? we will start to see information and starts to l study? we will start to see i information and starts to learn about the disease very quickly, from the first few volunteers. 50 i think a key area of learning and this will be to ensure safety, we are inoculating younger volunteers, 18 to 30—year—olds. one key difference between the a2 and an older age group is that the vast majority will have an asymptomatic infection. that's very difficult if not impossible to study outside of this environment. asymptomatic individuals who are infected but have no symptoms other driver for a pandemic because they don't stay at home because they don't feel unwell. so instead they go about their normal daily business, coming into contact with people. if we can learn about asymptomatic infection and then later in the vaccine stu

earlier my colleague victoria derbyshire spoke to dr andrew catchpole — chief scientific officer at hvivollenge models. he explained why these kind of trials are important. this is going to be a really important tool, actually, to help us fight the pandemic. it's already quite clear that the current wave of vaccines that are being rolled out very successfully now are, whilst they are wonderful, not going to be the answer to eradicating this virus. it's clear that we are seeing variants emerge with the virus as it continues to transmit globally, but as that happens eventually they will be a variant which pops up which is able then to evade the current vaccines. new vaccines will be needed. so, in such a scenario, we are going to need a way of testing these new vaccines to be sure that they can work against these new variant viruses. and human viral challenge models, because they directly inoculate volunteers, are able to establish whether the vaccines are working extremely quickly. much less volunteers involved, therefore much quicker responses to determine if the vaccines are working. rig

let�*s talk to dr andrew catchpole, chief scientific officer at the clinical company involved in thes? good morning. we believe this is going to be a _ this? good morning. we believe this is going to be a really _ this? good morning. we believe this is going to be a really important - is going to be a really important tool to help us fight the pandemic. it is already clear that the current wave of vaccines that are being rolled out very successfully now, whilst they are wonderful, they are not going to be the answer to eradicating the virus. we are seeing variants emerge with the virus as it transmits globally, as that happens, there will be a variant which pops up there will be a variant which pops up which is able to evade the current vaccines, and new vaccines will be needed. in such a scenario we are going to need a way of testing these new vaccines to make sure they can work against these variant viruses and human viral, because they inoculate volunteers, are able to establish whether the vaccine is working extremely quickly, much less volunteers involved, much quicker responses