poonawalla: Poonawalla family donates Rs 500 crore to Oxford University to build new vaccine research centre – Times of India
LONDON: The owners of the Serum Institute of India, the Poonawalla family, have announced a £50 million (Rs 500 crore) donation to Oxford University to build a new research centre focused on vaccinology.
The donation from Serum Life Sciences, wholly owned by the Poonawalla family, is Oxford university’s largest ever gift for vaccines research. It will be used to create a new facility to house more than 300 research scientists in the Old Road Campus.
Named the Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building, it will house the headquarters and main laboratory space of the Jenner Institute where the Oxford University/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine was developed, as well as other leading Oxford teams such as those developing a malaria vaccine.
It will be built on the same site as the recently announced Oxford University Pandemic Sciences Centre and the two buildings will share infrastructure and support facilities for scientific research and academic teaching and together will form a unique hub that will contribute to global pandemic preparedness.
Professor Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, said: “The university has longstanding ties with the Poonawalla family and we were delighted to confer an honorary degree on Cyrus Poonawalla in the summer of 2019 in recognition of his extraordinary work manufacturing inexpensive vaccines for the developing world. I am delighted that through this generous gift we will be able to further our work on vaccines which have proven so critical to global health.”
Future Serum Institute-Jenner Institute collaborations include an agreement for Serum Institute to manufacture and develop, with large-scale supply, the Jenner Institute’s promising malaria vaccine, currently in Phase III trials, prioritising countries with high malaria burdens.
Prof Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, said the success of collaboration between the university and Serum Institute on the malaria and Covid-19 vaccines highlighted the potential of partnerships between universities and manufacturers to develop and supply vaccines cost-effectively at scale.
The donation from Serum Life Sciences, wholly owned by the Poonawalla family, is Oxford university’s largest ever gift for vaccines research. It will be used to create a new facility to house more than 300 research scientists in the Old Road Campus.
Named the Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building, it will house the headquarters and main laboratory space of the Jenner Institute where the Oxford University/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine was developed, as well as other leading Oxford teams such as those developing a malaria vaccine.
It will be built on the same site as the recently announced Oxford University Pandemic Sciences Centre and the two buildings will share infrastructure and support facilities for scientific research and academic teaching and together will form a unique hub that will contribute to global pandemic preparedness.
Professor Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, said: “The university has longstanding ties with the Poonawalla family and we were delighted to confer an honorary degree on Cyrus Poonawalla in the summer of 2019 in recognition of his extraordinary work manufacturing inexpensive vaccines for the developing world. I am delighted that through this generous gift we will be able to further our work on vaccines which have proven so critical to global health.”
Future Serum Institute-Jenner Institute collaborations include an agreement for Serum Institute to manufacture and develop, with large-scale supply, the Jenner Institute’s promising malaria vaccine, currently in Phase III trials, prioritising countries with high malaria burdens.
Prof Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, said the success of collaboration between the university and Serum Institute on the malaria and Covid-19 vaccines highlighted the potential of partnerships between universities and manufacturers to develop and supply vaccines cost-effectively at scale.
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