Funding vaccine research at Oxford University

A £50 million donation will create a new centre for the world-class Jenner Institute, says Healthcare World Editor Sarah Cartledge

The AstraZeneca vaccine was one of the first weapons against COVID-19, developed by Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert and her team at the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. Within just 65 days the vaccine was ready to start clinical trials and since then more than 1.5 billion doses have been deployed, potentially saving millions of lives.

As a leading vaccinologist, Professor Gilbert now has other vaccines in her sights, including Ebola, Zika, Ri Valley Fever, Dengue and even the Plague. While funding has been an issue in the past, the sudden arrival of COVID-19 has put the spotlight firmly on preparation against future pandemics.

As a result, Oxford University has received the largest-ever gi for vaccines research from Serum Life Sciences, wholly-owned by the Poonawalla family of the Serum Institute of India, who have dedicated their life’s work to the development, manufacture and supply of a ordable vaccines to low-and middle-income countries.

“Vaccines save lives, and the development of vaccines has been the lifelong focus of the Poonawalla family,” says Natasha Poonawalla, Chair, Serum Life Sciences. “We are committed to developing and supplying vaccines to people who need them most. We are making this keystone donation to give the world-class team at Oxford a brand-new facility from which to take their research to the next level.”

The Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building will be built on the same site as the recently announced Oxford

University Pandemic Sciences Centre, on the University’s Old Road Campus. The buildings will share infrastructure and support facilities for scientific research and academic teaching and together will form a unique hub that will significantly contribute to global pandemic preparedness and responsiveness.

The main focus of the research taking place in the Poonawalla Building will be vaccinology. Housing more than 300 research scientists, the facility itself will provide the focus and scale for the University’s major vaccine development programmes allowing a rapid, productive and timely expansion of this fast-growing translational area.

“The COVID pandemic has shown us our strengths and weaknesses. While we cannot eliminate risk, we have shown that innovation, determination and partnership can transform our ability to counter and constrain global health threats. This generous gi will help create a world-leading hub for pandemic research and innovation,” says Professor Sir Peter Horby, Director, Pandemic Sciences Centre.

The donation reinforces and builds on the Serum Institute of India’s longstanding partnership with Oxford University. Importantly, the Poonawalla Building will house the headquarters and main laboratory space of the Jenner Institute, the world-leading academic vaccine institute named a er Edward Jenner, the father of vaccination.

The Jenner Institute brings together investigators who are designing and developing numerous vaccines to generate an exceptional breadth of scientific know-how and critical mass, whilst still allowing the individual investigators to remain independent and accountable to their funders and stakeholders. The most recent Serum Institute-Jenner Institute collaboration saw the rapid development and global roll-out of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at scale.

“The striking success of the collaborative programmes on both the malaria and COVID-19 vaccines between the Serum Institute of India and Oxford University has highlighted the great potential of partnerships between leading Universities and largescale manufacturers to develop and supply vaccines for very cost-e ective deployment at exceptional scale,” says Professor Adrian Hill, Director of the Jenner Institute.

Further Serum Institute-Jenner Institute collaborations include an agreement for Serum Institute to manufacture and develop, with large scale supply, the Jenner Institute’s promising R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine, currently in Phase III trials, prioritising countries

“The University has longstanding ties with the Poonawalla family and we were delighted to confer an honorary degree on Cyrus Poonawalla in Summer 2019 in recognition of his extraordinary work manufacturing inexpensive vaccines for the developing world,” says Professor Louise Richardson, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford.

“I am delighted that through this generous gi we will be able to further our work on vaccines which have proven so critical to global health. We will also ensure that we are never again caught unprepared for a global pandemic.”

Natasha Poonawalla Chair Serum Life Sciences

“We are committed to developing and supplying vaccines to people who need them most”