A Fermanagh born scientist working on a vaccine to stop the spread of coronavirus has spoken of her pride at being involved in the groundbreaking project in the United States.

Linda Murphy (nee Rennick) who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband Colum and their sixth month old son Finn works with Professor Paul Duprex, originally from Lurgan, at one of the most advanced centres of vaccine research in America.

The Enniskillen woman has worked with Mr. Duprex for 20 years and is currently employed as a research assistant professor in his lab. Along with Institut Pasteur in Paris and Themis Bioscience in Vienna the centre has received a $4.9 million grant from CEPI (Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness Innovations to support development of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate.

Speaking from the U.S., Mrs. Murphy told The Impartial Reporter that this approach makes use of the measles vaccine which has been administered to billions of children over the years and is known to be safe and very effective.

“The measles vaccine is modified so that it contains a small part of the virus that causes Covid-19. The hope is that when this modified vaccine is administered it will give the recipient immunity to the virus that causes Covid-19.

“It’s nice to see everything we’ve learned from the work done with measles virus over the years being applied to trying to combat this new disease,” she said.

Mrs. Murphy said it is “amazing” to see her colleagues “dropping everything to do their bit”.

“Everyone is applying their personal expertise from working on other viruses to research this new virus.

“The scientific community worldwide is pulling together to quickly find out as much as they can about the virus and the disease and new information is being published daily,” she said.

She said the speed of the disease around the world “and the impact it has had on everyone’s lives” scares her, adding: “As scientists, we’ve known that something like this was likely to happen at some point, but even being prepared and knowing about viruses it was still quite a shock and frightening, so I can’t imagine how scary it must be for people who aren’t familiar with viruses.”

In a message to anyone getting ‘itchy feet’, Mrs. Murphy said “just because lockdowns are easing doesn’t men the virus has gone away”.

“People might think what they do won’t make a difference, but because of the way viruses spread, every potential infection that is avoided makes an impact on virus spread in your community.

“Keep washing your hands and stop touching your face,” she said.

Mrs. Murphy first got to know Mr. Duprex when she started her Ph.D working on measles virus with him at Queen’s University in Belfast in 1996.

She added: “I also spent a part of my Ph.D. working at the Pirbright Institute for Animal Health, England, and happened to be there during the foot and mouth disease outbreak in 2001.

“I wasn’t involved in the testing but it was really interesting to see the response first hand. After finishing my Ph.D. in 2003 I continued to work with Paul as a post-doctoral researcher at Queen’s until 2010. Then we moved to Boston University to work at the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories,” she said.

NEIDL contains a high containment laboratory where viruses like Ebola can be studied.

“The highlight of our time there was work on a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to study measles vaccine. This was a collaboration with the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and we regularly travelled there for big experiments. Paul moved to the Center for Vaccine Research in 2018 to start up the new lab and I remained at NEIDL until 2019 to finish up some of our research and to close down that lab,” she said.

And being so far away from Fermanagh she admits to missing home, including her parents George and Beth Rennick, sister Shirley and husband Ivor Malone and nephews Ethan and Aaron in Enniskillen as well as grandparents Noble and Anna Hutchinson from Magheraveely. She also refers to her late grandparents Robert and Grace Rennick from Bonahesco.

“I do miss ‘home’ home, and my family and friends, especially now that I have a baby.”

Mrs. Murphy says she has “been very lucky to have spent the last 20 years working on something I love in great places”.