Oxford Biomedica Collaborates with AstraZeneca for COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate Manufacturing

Oxford Biomedica, a cell and gene therapy company located in the United Kingdom, announced on Sept. 1, 2020 that it has signed an 18-month supply and development agreement with AstraZeneca UK for the large-scale commercial manufacture of AstraZeneca’s adenovirus vector-based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, AZD1222.

Through the agreement, AstraZeneca will pay Oxford Biomedica a £15 million (USD $20 million) reservation fee and the company will receive an additional £35 million (USD $46 million) if the manufacturing capacity and continuation of the vaccine program is deemed satisfactory, an Oxford Biomedica press release said. Oxford Biomedica will reserve capacity for AstraZeneca in three of its manufacturing suites in its new commercial manufacturing center, Oxbox, for 18 months.

“We have been working hard with AstraZeneca and other partners to establish GMP manufacturing of AZD1222 at scale, and we are therefore very pleased to extend our current partnership to include large-scale manufacturing of the vaccine candidate, AZD1222,” said John Dawson, CEO of Oxford Biomedica, in the press release. “Our previously announced partnership with the UK’s Vaccine Manufacturing Innovation Centre has supported our ability to make additional facilities available for this supply agreement. We look forward to continuing to work with AstraZeneca to rapidly contribute to the global effort to support the large-scale manufacturing of AZD1222 to ensure that the vaccine candidate is available if and when it is approved by regulatory authorities.”

Source: Oxford Biomedica