Poonawalla family donates Rs 500 crore to Oxford University

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, which is wholly-owned by the Poonawalla family, is Oxford University’s largest ever gift for vaccine research. It will be used to create a facility to house over 300 research scientists.
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.

Professor Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of Oxford university, said: “The university has long-standing 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.”

Future Serum Institute-Jenner Institute collaborations include an agreement for the Serum Institute to manufacture and develop, with large-scale supply, the Jenner Institute’s promising malaria vaccine, currently in Phase III trials.
Professor Adrian Hill, director of the Jenner Institute, said the success of collaboration between the university and the Serum Institute on 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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