Oxford Biomedica Signs Clinical & Commercial Supply Agreement with AstraZeneca, for manufacture of COVID-19 vaccine candidate

Oxford, UK – 28 May, 2020: Oxford Biomedica plc (LSE:OXB) (“Oxford Biomedica” or “the Group”), a leading gene and cell therapy group, announced today that it has signed a one year Clinical & Commercial Supply Agreement with AstraZeneca UK Ltd (“AstraZeneca”). 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 is working alongside AstraZeneca and other manufacturing organisations to provide large scale manufacturing capacity for this vaccine candidate.

As part of the Clinical & Commercial Supply Agreement, AstraZeneca will have access to Oxford Biomedica’s new 7,800 m² commercial manufacturing centre Oxbox, located in Oxford, UK. In April 2020 Oxford Biomedica announced that it had joined a consortium including the Jenner Institute in relation to the potential for large scale manufacture of AZD1222. On 30 April 2020 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.

John Dawson, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford Biomedica, said: “We are proud to be a part of the manufacturing consortium working with the Jenner Institute at University of Oxford, for the early manufacturing and scale up of this viral vector based candidate for COVID-19. Following the recent announcement of an agreement between the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, we are very pleased to be one of AstraZeneca’s global network of manufacturing partners, and look forward to them being the third company to have rapid access to our specialised manufacturing capacity for this vaccine candidate at Oxbox”.