Andrea Collins graduated from Bristol University Medical School with honours in 2002, joining Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) in 2011 as a Clinical Research Fellow in Respiratory Infection, funded by the National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centre in Liverpool. She completed her PhD that focused on lower respiratory tract infection in adults; carriage, therapeutics and prevention, under the supervision of Prof Stephen Gordon, in 2017, and continues as a key clinical leader in controlled human infection models.

She has worked extensively with the British Thoracic Society (TB Travel sponsorship award, chair of the Specialist Trainee Advisory Group 2011-2014, infection SAG member 2020-onwards) and National Institute of Health Research (National COVID-19 vaccine research delivery group, North West Coast Respiratory SRG co-lead 2018-2025).

Andrea was instrumental in the Respiratory Research team winning the Royal Liverpool Hospital’s Directors’ Star/ Make a Difference - The Chief Executive’s Award in 2015 and in 2014 was awarded the prestigious Career Investigator Award from the British Lung Foundation at the British Thoracic Society Conference for her work on the Experimental Human Pneumococcal Colonisation model.

LSTM Staff Awards 2023 - Collaboration Award, NIHR Research and Innovation Awards 2022 - Winner, The COVID-19 Research and Innovation Award – Pandemic Response and Finalist, Research Collaboration of the Year; Awards 2019 - Winner, Research team/site of the year, Finalist - Excellence in the Delivery of Commercial Life Science Research.

Andrea was also principal investigator of the highest UK recruiting site to the Oxford AZ COVID vaccine study, leading to vaccine licensure in 2020, and administered over 2 billion times across the globe.

Andrea works in the Department of Clinical Sciences in the Liverpool Life Sciences ‘Accelerator’ Building. She is passionate about her vision of safe, affordable vaccines for the world. Her research focuses on collaboration, controlled human infection models particularly respiratory (especially vaccines, but also diagnostics and therapeutics and transmission), respiratory vaccines, bronchiectasis and research bronchoalveolar lavage.

Her research is mainly focussed within the Liverpool Vaccine Group, where she was Accelerator Research Clinic Director 2017-2024. Their global first EHPC model is used for vaccine testing and uses pneumococcal nasal colonisation as a surrogate end point for clinical disease, thus allowing new vaccines to be safely and rapidly assessed in small numbers of volunteers, reducing time and cost of early-stage vaccine candidate validation.

During Andrea’s time as Accelerator Research Clinic Director the team grew from 15 staff working on a single challenge model in a five-bed clinic to 30+ staff working on over five controlled human infection mode pathogens models and various vaccine studies on an 18-bed out-patient unit and a 12 bed in-patient unit (the largest non-commercial unit in the UK) – completing over 30 trials to time and target during this time period as principal investigator or chief investigator. These trials had high global impact.

She works closely with University Hospitals of Liverpool Group and primary care sites to encourage cross-Mersey research in patients and healthy volunteers (including phase 1 studies) in the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency accredited Clinical Research Facility, in the Accelerator Research Clinic at the Liverpool Life Sciences Accelerator and in the newly UK Research and Innovation Research England Development-funded Human Challenge Facility.

She is an experienced bronchoscopist having performed more than 200 research bronchoalveolar lavages independently and set up a disposable research bronchoscopy service at University Hospitals of Liverpool Group. Commercial partnerships since have investigated Phase 1 drug lung penetration studies for novel antibiotics for pneumonia, vaccine responses at mucosal surfaces and bronchiectasis monoclonal antibodies.

Andrea teaches on LSTM’s Microbiology and Public Health master’s course. She is an Advanced Life Support instructor.

She supports PhD students and topics for interested future students include: new human challenge models, new applications/discoveries within existing human challenge models/samples, bronchiectasis, research involving research bronchoscopy sampling/pre-existing samples, RSV vaccines, respiratory infection/mucosal vaccines and therapeutics.

Andrea is experienced with live TV filming (BBC Breakfast news), live radio (BBC Merseyside, radio 4, Radio Merseyside), pre-recorded TV and radio (Granada, BBC North West tonight, ITV tonight).