How the COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced that collaborations are the future

So much has changed since the country was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic and went into lockdown at the end of March. We have all experienced such immense upheaval both at home and at work.

But out of all of this, I am incredibly heartened to see that one thing remains clear – the power of partnership and collaboration.

On a personal level, we have seen partnerships reveal themselves in the way individuals, teams and communities across the globe have rallied together to support each other.

Professionally, we have seen not just a need but a desire to collaborate wherever we feel we can make a difference. At AstraZeneca we have long believed that in order to achieve everything we want to as a company, we have to work with others, marrying different ideas and skills to help us turn great science into great medicines.

Doing what science does best

Because of our collaborative culture, we were able to rapidly focus our research efforts to respond to COVID-19. We knew that combining the expertise of our teams with that of others across the industry would enable us to have the greatest impact tackling the pandemic on a number of fronts.

In partnership with Vanderbilt University and DARPA, we quickly switched our microbial research efforts to the discovery of novel coronavirus-neutralising antibodies as a treatment. We have gone from programme start to candidate antibody selection in a matter of months. Our aim is to have these antibodies entering clinical development within the next few days and have efficacy readout before the end of the year.

Another example is our landmark agreement with Oxford University for the global development and distribution of AZD1222, the potential recombinant adenovirus vaccine to protect against the virus. We have committed to do this at no profit during the pandemic period.

In just five weeks, our teams were able to secure global supply capacity to exceed two billion doses. We continue to build a number of supply chains in parallel across the world to expand manufacturing capacity further so, should the vaccine prove to be successful in clinical trials, we can start getting it to as many people as we can, as quickly as we can.

Recently, we saw the first set of data from the Phase I/II UK trial led by Oxford showing the vaccine candidate was tolerated and demonstrated a robust immune response, generating both antibodies and T-cells. Late-stage trials are ongoing globally where we are assessing safety, efficacy, immune response and dosing regimens.

We of course recognise that the potential vaccine may not work. But we are doing what we always do, following the science, even in the face of uncertainty, and are doing everything we can to support this vaccine with our commitment to progressing the clinical programme at speed.

Exceptional challenges require exceptional ways of working

We have also been looking hard at our new and existing medicines to see if any can be used to treat the virus and its complications.

Alongside colleagues at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute, we have started a randomised, global Phase III trial to assess the potential of our diabetes medicine, dapagliflozin to treat patients hospitalised with COVID-19. Cardiac, renal and metabolic comorbidities have been associated with poor outcomes and death in these patients.

The goal of the trial is to assess whether this medicine can reduce the risk of disease progression, clinical complications and death due to COVID-19 in patients who also have cardiovascular, metabolic or kidney risk factors.

We are running another clinical trial with acalabrutinib – the fastest launch of any clinical trial in the history of AstraZeneca – with the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in the USA to evaluate how this cancer medicine might help alleviate the “cytokine storm” associated with the virus.

And we created a COVID-19 testing facility - the Cambridge Testing Centre - a unique partnership with our friends and colleagues at GSK and the University of Cambridge at the University’s Anne McLaren Building which has innovation and cutting-edge technology at its heart.

It was the endeavour of collaboration, innovation, and resilience which saw us get a state-of-the-art facility operational in just five weeks and is testament to the strength of both the UK’s life sciences sector and the life sciences cluster in Cambridge. I am incredibly proud of the remarkable effort of every single person involved.

The Centre will continue to be led by AstraZeneca with CRO Charles River Laboratories managing the more than 200 directly employed scientists, with the University of Cambridge providing the lab facility and staff for the Centre to deliver testing capability into 2021. We hope the innovation introduced in the Centre will help foster diagnostic capability for the network in the UK for years to come support the Government’s ongoing testing programme.

Creating a lasting legacy of partnerships

Every partnership we have undertaken since the pandemic struck has shared the same purpose – to combine our scientific expertise, knowledge and capabilities to tackle this virus.

Of course, the pandemic has created healthcare challenges we’ve never seen or had to deal with before. But I truly believe that the collaborations we have built, not just across our industry but with governments, academia, biotech and healthcare workers across the world, will be a positive and lasting legacy of COVID-19 both for our industry and our society.

We know that defeating COVID-19 requires a collective effort from everyone working in healthcare and we are absolutely committed to playing our part.