Pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has entered into an agreement with the University of Oxford to manufacture and distribute a potential vaccine for the coronavirus.
Under the agreement, the U.K.-based pharmaceutical company will be responsible for the development and global manufacturing and distribution of the potential vaccine known as ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, being developed by the Jenner Institute and Oxford Vaccine Group at the University of Oxford, AstraZeneca said in a press release on Thursday.
Oxford said the partnership will begin immediately, which “will allow for rapid vaccination around the world if the COVID-19 vaccine candidate proves to be effective.” The institute and vaccine group began human trials of the vaccine last week to study safety and efficacy in healthy volunteers aged 18 to 55, AstraZeneca said.
“Our hope is that, by joining forces, we can accelerate the globalization of a vaccine to combat the virus and protect people from the deadliest pandemic in a generation,” AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said.
Only a handful of potential COVID-19 vaccines have made it to human trials and concern remains that even if vaccines prove to be effective, the institutions developing them won’t be able to manufacture them on a large enough scale.
Mr Soriot added that the fact AstraZeneca was UK-based made Oxford university a natural partner.
“Being British-based we are in regular contact with British academia,” he said. “We had discussions with the vaccine group in Oxford, we looked at the vaccine, we thought it had a good chance of working. [It is] one of the best, if not the best, vaccine team in the world.”
Data from Oxford’s vaccine candidate, which is being developed by the team led by Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at Oxford’s Jenner Institute, entered phase-one testing last week. It is hoped early results could be available as early as next month. The collaboration pushed shares in AstraZeneca 2.8 per higher, to a record of 229p a share.
John Bell, a professor in medicine at Oxford university who is part of the UK government’s vaccine task force, said AstraZeneca “ticked all the boxes”. The UK government had to ensure that Britain was not cut out of the supply should a vaccine be developed, and so having a UK-based manufacturer was important, he said.