Gene and cell therapy group Oxford Biomedica has signed a one-year clinical and commercial supply agreement with AstraZeneca for the manufacture of a Covid-19 vaccine candidate.
The agreement relates to the GMP manufacture of the adenovirus vector based Covid-19 vaccine candidate, AZD1222, which recently entered clinical trials at multiple sites in the UK. Oxford Biomedica said it is working alongside AstraZeneca and other manufacturing organisations to provide large scale manufacturing capacity for this vaccine candidate. As part of the Clinical and Commercial Supply Agreement, AstraZeneca is to have access to Oxford Biomedica’s new 7,800 sq m commercial manufacturing centre Oxbox, located in Oxford, UK.
In April 2020, Oxford Biomedica announced that it had joined a consortium including the Jenner Institute, which is part of the Nuffield Department of medicine at Oxford University, in relation to the potential for large scale manufacture of AZD1222. AstraZeneca and Oxford University subsequently announced an agreement to enable global development, manufacturing and distribution of the vaccine. The initial agreement requires Oxford Biomedica to provide AstraZeneca with multiple batches of vaccine, the majority of which are expected to be produced throughout 2020. The production will be from one of the Group’s recently approved GMP suites in Oxbox. The Commercial Supply agreement may be extended further, depending on the progression of the programme.
Employing 500 people, Oxford Biomedica is a fully integrated gene and cell therapy group focused on developing life changing treatments for serious diseases. Together with its subsidiaries, it has built a sector leading lentiviral vector delivery platform, LentiVector, which the Group leverages to develop in vivo and ex vivo products both in-house and with partners. Its proprietary portfolio includes gene and cell therapy product candidates in the areas of oncology, ophthalmology, CNS disorders, liver diseases and respiratory disease. Other partnerships include Novartis, Bristol Myers Squibb, Sanofi, Axovant Gene Therapies, Orchard Therapeutics, Santen, Boehringer Ingelheim, the UK Cystic Fibrosis Gene Therapy Consortium and Imperial Innovations.
