(August 19, 2020) CSIRO welcomes Australian agreement with AstraZeneca to provide access to Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine
CSIRO welcomes the Australian Government’s agreement with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca,
to give Australians access to the University of Oxford’s COVID-19 vaccine,
should it prove successful, safe and effective. CSIRO also welcomes the news that the Australian Government is working with CSL and AstraZeneca
to assess whether it is possible to provide local manufacturing support for the vaccine,
should it prove successful. As Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO is playing a critical role
in the global efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. In March this year, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) engaged CSIRO
to undertake a preclinical trial of Oxford’s vaccine candidate at the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (ACDP).
ACDP is CSIRO’s high-containment biosecurity facility, the only lab of its kind in the southern hemisphere.
CSIRO has shared early data from the preclinical trial with CEPI and Oxford University,
which enabled the vaccine candidate to progress on to phase 3 clinical (human) trials.
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