Keith Chappell is a laconic man with sideburns that wouldn’t be out of place in a hipster brewery. His tone is quiet and calm, even as he discusses the news that derailed 11 months of intense research to try and solve the global problem that has changed our lives.
“You have your heart and mind set on, ‘We’re going to save some lives – we’re going to help the world get back to normal through this devastating pandemic.’ And to have that hope taken away from us was incredibly hard to deal with,” he says.
An associate professor at the University of Queensland, Chappell has spent much of his career trying to find ways to stabilise viral surface proteins. He began studying flaviviruses – viruses transmitted to humans by mosquitoes and ticks that cause the most prevalent viral infections worldwide – during his PhD at UQ. Then he spent three years at the Instituto Salud Carlos III in Madrid working on stabilising the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) surface fusion protein, the target for a potential RSV vaccine.
When he returned to Australia in 2011, he began to search for a stabilising method that is both versatile and quick. Together with Paul Young and Daniel Watterson, he created the molecular clamp technology.
In January 2020, the research team received funding from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness to boost the technology and develop new vaccines to help stop the world’s next epidemic.
Only days later, we woke up to find an unknown virus – then named SARS-CoV-2 – quickly
