"The donation will be the University of Oxford’s largest ever gift for vaccines research.” This news post dated December 15, 2021 on the Oxford University website ox.ac.uk was referring to the magnanimous contribution of £ 50 million (Rs 502.77 crore) made by Serum Life Sciences (SLS), a subsidiary company of the Serum Institute of India (SII) founded by Dr Cyrus Poonawalla. The donation will result in the setting up of The Poonawalla Vaccines Research Building at Oxford University where the main focus will be vaccinology.
Referring to the University’s "long-standing ties with the Poonawalla family,” University vice chancellor Prof Louise Richardson was quoted on the website, "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.”
Chair of SLS and executive director of SII, Natasha Poonawalla remarked, "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 key donation to give the world-class team at Oxford a brand-new facility from which to take their research to the next level.”
The Poonawalla Building will be constructed on the same site as the recently announced Oxford University Pandemic Sciences Centre on the University’s Old Road Campus. It will house the headquarters and main laboratory space of the Jenner Institute, the leading academic vaccine institute named after Edward Jenner, the father of vaccination. The recent SII-Jenner Institute collaboration saw rapid development and global roll-out of the Oxford created, AstraZeneca developed and SII produced Covishield vaccine for Covid-19. Prospective collaboration plans between these two institutes include an agreement for SII to manufacture and develop, with large scale supply, the Jenner Institute’s promising R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine, currently in Phase III trials, prioritizing countries with high malaria burdens.
"This new facility will house over 300 research scientists and will provide the focus and scale for the University’s major vaccine development programs, allowing a rapid, productive and timely expansion of this fast-growing translational area… The buildings will share infrastructure and support facilities for scientific research and academic teaching and together will form a unique hub that will significantly contribute to global pandemic preparedness and responsiveness,” specified the website.
Above (from l): Dr Cyrus, Natasha and Adar Poonawalla
Prof Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, alluded to "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. We look forward to a wider range of vaccine activities in the future, building on this generous support from the Poonawalla family.” Similar sentiments were expressed by Prof Sir Peter Horby, director, Pandemic Sciences Centre, who noted, "Whilst we cannot eliminate risk, we have shown that innovation, determination and partnership can transform our ability to counter and constrain global health threats. This generous gift will help create a world-leading hub for pandemic research and innovation; a scientific power-house dedicated to protecting health for all.”
The Poonawalla Building "will no doubt become a landmark institution as part of the prestigious and world renowned Oxford University in the UK. More importantly, it will promote the minority Parsi entrepreneurship and indeed propel India to the forefront of the world forum,” noted an email from Rusi Dalal, trustee of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe (ZTFE), when reporting on the largesse of their honorary life member Cyrus and his family. The new venture will not only give "a bilateral boost to India and the UK but will be of global benefit,” summed up Dalal while thanking ZTFE patron Lord Karan Bilimoria, current president of the Confederation of British Industry, for using his good offices to facilitate this donation.
In recognition of his exemplary work, manufacturing inexpensive vaccines for the developing world, Oxford University had conferred an honorary degree on Cyrus in the summer of 2019. A write-up in The Guardian of December 15, 2021 explained how Cyrus founded SII in 1966 as a side business to his 200-acre Poonawalla Stud Farms. Serum from horse blood was used in the production of early vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus and scarlet fever.
The article gave credit to his son Adar, the chief executive officer of SII, for convincing his father to "go big” on vaccines after he watched a Bill Gates talk in 2015 when the billionaire Microsoft co-founder-turned philanthropist warned that the world was not prepared for a new viral pandemic. "We produce 1.5 billion vaccine doses each year. We never imagined the whole world being so dependent on us, but nobody else has our capacity to scale up,” noted Adar.