AstraZeneca PLC (LSE:AZN) announced today that it had signed a new three-year agreement with Oxford BioMedica PLC (LSE:OXB) to manufacture the Covid-19 vaccine.
The Oxford-based company plans to open a new facility to produce AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine called the Oxbox in the last three months of the year and is expected to generate £30mln of revenue from the arrangement.
The two companies first struck a supply and development deal for the vaccine in September 2020.
Oxford Biomedica’s interim chief executive Roch Doliveux said the company has so far delivered more than 100 million doses of the vaccine.
“While contributing to the efforts to fight the pandemic, this has also demonstrated Oxford Biomedica's ability to expand the scope of our innovative process development services and deliver high-performing manufacturing solutions beyond lentiviral vectors,” he said.
The news follows a National Health Service study at the University College London, which found a correlation between first doses of the AstraZeneca drug and a rise in cases of neurological condition Guillain-Barré syndrome.