Interesting. Local university health system here had a very active vaccine program. They adapted a sars-1 vaccine to create antibodies to covid in 2 weeks, then proved in mouse trials that it created significant antibodies, But it never got picked up. There's probably 100 stories like that across the US before they settled on which direction (method, etc, candidates) they were going to go with.
Would assume the same kind of research was going on in the UK at great volume in medical schools.