Jayne Hope

Crucially, as TB is a zoonotic disease, it can spread from cattle and other animals to humans. Yet, while the need for a cure is great, scientific progress can be slow. Jayne concedes progress takes time:

Working on a disease that's so prominent and is such a pressing issue focuses the mind. Even after decades of research, you can still be nowhere near having a product, a vaccine or a therapeutic.

For Jayne, the key to success is collaboration. “I’ve got an amazing team of PhD students, technicians and post-docs. Everyone’s working on slightly different aspects of things, but it’s all related with a common goal.” 

Jayne’s team collaborates with UK Government agencies, with colleagues at Aberystwyth University and other academic institutions and with industry; working together to tackle the complexity of deploying the human BCG vaccine for use in cattle.  

“We work alongside the UK government, with the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and with the Animal & Plant Health Agency (APHA) to really understand how a BCG vaccine works in cattle. How and when do we administer it? How do we test for TB in BCG-vaccinated animals? Because one of the biggest problems with the BCG vaccine is that the current diagnostic tests can't tell the difference between the vaccine and the disease (TB), but this is finally progressing with a field trial of BCG and a new diagnostic test ongoing.” 

The years of effort are paying off. “It’s super exciting that the Steering Group of the Bovine TB Partnership for England recently published their recommended bovine TB strategy, which includes vaccination of cattle” Jayne enthuses. “It’s now likely that BCG vaccination will be given widely to cattle in England by 2030.”  

While this major development after years of research and field trials is a huge step forward, Jayne remains focused on the immediate future, relentlessly searching for solutions that are more effective, cheaper, safer and easier to produce. 

That research requires funding and that means exploring every available source from Government grants to commercial investors. She says it's a balance:

It's about learning different ways of looking at things. As someone who's from a purely science background, I'm interested in the biological processes but there are lots of different push and pull factors that enable, or hamper, progress. One is, how are you going to continue to bring money in to fund your research? And that leads you down the commercialisation path and looking for alternative funding partners.

While that can be daunting, Jayne appreciates the support she’s received to make sense of the business side of science. 

“I've been very lucky in both institutes that I've worked in that we've had really good support from the commercialisation and innovation development teams.” 

Again, the focus is on close collaboration – a process that works both ways with the team at Edinburgh Innovations. 

Sometimes it will be them coming to me and saying, ‘look, there's this opportunity in the TB space’ and then other times it'll be me saying, ‘I think there's something here that we might develop, for example, into a diagnostic test’. Those conversations have been very open and very two-way. So that's helpful.

Understandably, the recent recommendation to press ahead with a full-scale BCG vaccination programme in England has created a moment of reflection for Jayne. Her group has spent many years and played an instrumental role in the study of BCG vaccination in cattle. Now, as she looks back on a substantial body of scientific research, she’s taking the opportunity to carefully consider how her team can continue to build on this legacy through the ongoing search for new products that will contribute to the long-term viability of the farming industry as well as protecting animal and human health. 

“I started my postdoctoral journey with studies of BCG in cattle and having got to this point where it's going into the field, it feels like I've come full circle,” she says as she looks to the future and the long-term sustainability of the work being done by her team to eradicate one of the world’s most impactful diseases. “I’m thinking about career progression for the people who work in my group and what’s going to happen to them over the next decade or so.”  

“I’ve still got five years or so,” she says with a wry smile, “but after that I'll be sitting on a beach somewhere drinking margaritas.”