OXFORDSHIRE: A YEAR IN THE GLOBAL SPOTLIGHT

On December 30, The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was given the go-ahead for use against Covid-19. For months we’d been waiting for one vaccine, then two come along within weeks of each other – the Pfizer/ BioNTech had already been approved at the beginning of the month.

That the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine doesn’t have to be stored at a temperature of -70C, like the Pfizer vaccine, makes its deployment much easier (In January it was reported that more than a thousand doses of Pfizer’s vaccine had to be destroyed after an employee at a health centre in Florida accidentally turned off the fridge in which they were being stored).

The Oxford vaccine, developed by a team led by University of Oxford Professor of Vaccinology, Dr Sarah Gilbert, can be stored for six months at temperatures between 2C and 8C, not only making it easier to transport around the UK, but also to people living in harder to reach areas of the world.

Since then, still more vaccines have been approved. The achievement of all those involved, not just in Oxford but around the world in bringing the vaccine development time down from between 10-15 years to less than a year cannot be overestimated.

Throughout the pandemic, Oxfordshire has been central to the UK’s response, with many senior scientists playing key roles. Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine at

Oxford University, is one. Undoubtedly one of the most well-connected scientists in the world, Sir John has been one of the UK government’s two Life Sciences Champions since 2011, regularly appearing in the media discussing the pandemic and the vaccines without hyperbole, something that perhaps others airing their views in the media could learn from.

He founded the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, chairs the Global Health Scientific Advisory Board of the

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and has founded biotech start-ups. He also advised the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce.

He authored the UK’s first Life Sciences Industrial Strategy in 2017, updating it last year and writing in the foreword: “One significant advantage of this Life Sciences Industrial Strategy is that it creates not only opportunities for economic growth, but also underpins a more efficient and effective health system. Together, it is hard to see where government can better spend its resources and energy.”

Vaccine Manufacturing Innovation Centre to open ahead of schedule

The government heeded his advice. Soon after the publication of the first strategy, it announced the UK’s first dedicated Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre (VMIC), which is now being built at Harwell Campus.

Backed by a total of £158 million from the government, VMIC will provide facilities and expertise to accelerate vaccine research in the UK and establish the UK’s first vaccines advanced manufacturing capabilities.

Project VMIC was first announced in 2018, more than a year before Covid-19 became rampant. Little did the government know how important that decision to invest would quickly come to be.

Last year, it awarded VMIC further funding to expand its vaccines production capabilities nearly 20-fold, and to fast-track the development schedule so the facility could open a year earlier. Because of Covid-19 and the threat of future pandemics, VMIC aims to open this year and needs to be fully operational in 2022, able to manufacture 70 million doses of a pandemic vaccine within a four to six month time frame.

VMIC CEO Dr Matthew Duchars, said: “Whilst few could have predicted the Covid-19 outbreak, we set out to do all we could to fast-track the build so VMIC could offer long-term pandemic support to the UK.”

Oxford BioMedica plays leading role in vaccine manufacture

In the meantime, another Oxford company, Oxford BioMedica, is one of two UK companies manufacturing the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine (the other is is in Staffordshire).

Its Oxbox facility was only completed at the end of 2019 with the Group expecting to have just one or potentially two of the manufacturing suites approved during 2020. But by that April it had joined the Oxford Vaccine Consortium and signed the first of two agreements with AstraZeneca for Covid-19 vaccine production. By October 2020, the Group had four manufacturing suites approved by the MHRA, three were contracted by AstraZeneca and are currently producing bulk vaccine at scale.

In January, as Oxford BioMedica was in full production at its new 84,000 sq ft facility, the company welcomed Boris Johnson, who paid tribute to the company’s 250-strong team.

He said: “You should be hugely proud of the role you’ve played in protecting the vulnerable, whilst creating a domestic manufacturing capability in months that would usually take years.”

John Dawson, Chief Executive Officer of Oxford BioMedica, added: “Oxford BioMedica is a global leader in lentiviral vectors and we as a Group were delighted to be able to rapidly deploy this world-class facility as part of the consortia to help during this global crisis.”

How an Abingdon company led the ventilator challenge

From vaccine manufacture to ventilators, a year ago the government issued a national challenge to UK manufacturing –it needed more ventilators for the NHS to treat Covid-19 patients.

The UK had access to around 5,000 ventilators, but the NHS said it needed thousands more in readiness to treat Covid-19 patients.

Within days The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium had been set up, made up of technology and engineering businesses from across the country’s aerospace, automotive and medical sectors. More than 1,000 offers of help came forward.

One company already had considerable expertise in the design and manufacture of anaesthesia ventilators, intubation and oxygen therapy equipment. More importantly Abingdon-based Penlon, which already made anaesthesia machines, had a system already approved by the MHRA.

Craig Thompson, Penlon’s Head of Products and Marketing, said: “We concentrated on developing a prototype to meet the government’s ventilator specification. The solution needed to be based on existing regulatory approved products to meet the short timescales and MHRA regulatory requirements. The first prototype for testing was completed on March 23, and MHRA approval was given on April 15.”

In the medical world, it doesn’t come faster than that.

Penlon didn’t have the manufacturing capability to meet the increased production targets, so Ford manufactured the ventilators, Airbus the breathing module and gas delivery, McLaren the trolleys and electronics manufacturer STI undertook the final assembly.

Many other companies also provided parts and expertise. Penlon, assisted by GKN, undertook the final test and product release. At one stage the company had around 450 people testing ventilators on the shop floor, having seconded staff from elsewhere.

“With ventilator and other critical shortages, the world went from globalisation to localisation in the blink of an eye,” said Craig. “Now the UK has the evidence to back an industrial strategy to make more critical products in this country.”

Many, many other Oxfordshire businesses are continuing to play key roles in fighting the pandemic, from DNA sequencing pioneer Oxford Nanopore which is helping in the testing and tracking of the virus, to Oxsed, which only launched last summer as a social enterprise to develop a rapid Covid-19 test. The test is being used at Heathrow. Oxsed has already been bought by DNAFit Life Sciences Ltd, part of Hong Kong-based Prenetics Ltd.