Poonawalla family donates £50m for Oxford vaccine building

The donation, from Serum Life Sciences Ltd, is the university’s largest ever gift for vaccines research.

The building will be situated at the Old Road Campus, and be the new home for the Jenner Institute – the team behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and others such as those developing a malaria vaccine.

Serum Life Sciences is owned by the Poonawalla family, owners of the Serum Institute of India, with the new building to be named The Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building.

The building, which will house more than 300 research scientists, will be built on the same site as the recently announced Oxford University Pandemic Sciences Centre.

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The two will share infrastructure and support facilities for scientific research and academic teaching, contributing to global pandemic preparedness and responsiveness.

Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, said: “The university has long-standing ties with the Poonawalla family and we were delighted to confer an honorary degree on Cyrus Poonawalla in summer 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.

“We will also ensure that we are never again caught unprepared for a global pandemic.”

Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford

Vaccine manufacturer the Serum Institute has worked with the university over the years, most recently in the development and global rollout of the Oxford vaccine.

Further collaborations include an agreement for the Serum Institute to manufacture and develop the Jenner Institute’s promising R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine, which is currently in phase three trials.

Natasha Poonawalla, chair of Serum Life Sciences, said: “We are delighted to make this £50m commitment to the University of Oxford, for the building of The Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building.

“Vaccines save lives, and the development of vaccines has been the lifelong focus of the Poonawalla family.

“We are committed to developing and supplying vaccines to people who need them most.

“To make this happen, we build many scientific collaborations with the world’s leading research institutes but today, we are making this keystone donation to give the world-class team at Oxford a brand new facility from which to take their research to the next level.”

Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, added: “The striking success of the collaborative programmes on both the malaria and Covid-19 vaccines between the Serum Institute of India and Oxford University has highlighted the great potential of partnerships between leading universities and large-scale manufacturers to develop and supply vaccines for very cost-effective deployment at exceptional scale.”