INTRODUCTION
Oxford: Building on a global stage
Other scientists also joined via Zoom to acknowledge a milestone that they all understood would register around world.
After eight months of ceaseless effort, every moment spent in a race against time against a deadly virus, they could finally release clinical trial results showing that the COVID-19 vaccine they had been developing with AstraZeneca was safe and effective.
At a time of global crisis, with a death toll approaching three million people in 2020 alone, the pioneers behind the Oxford vaccine reassured governments everywhere that science could halt the pandemic.
Professor Gilbert has always maintained there was no eureka moment on the path to this breakthrough, just a step-by-step process of discovery, building on vaccines work already taking place, but accelerated investment and joined-up thinking.
To date, that approach has seen over two billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine released to more than 170 countries.
The achievement underlined Oxford’s reputation as a scientific powerhouse and its research continues to offer hope in the face of critical healthcare challenges.
Earlier this year, for example, a malaria vaccine developed by Oxford University scientists was approved for use in Africa, raising the prospect that millions of children can be protected from one of the continent’s biggest killers.
The culmination of almost 30 years' work, the R21/Matrix-M vaccine has been licensed by regulators in Ghana for children aged five to 36 months - the group at highest risk of death from malaria. A breakthrough is desperately needed: the World Health Organisation estimates that malaria causes more than 621,000 deaths a year from around 214 million people infected.
Malaria is one of the leading causes of child mortality; on an average day, it kills about 1,300 children.
Oxford’s ability to respond to these and other global challenges has long shaped its regional identity and the quality of both the area’s academic institutions and commercially driven research and innovation base is one of the underlying strengths of UK Plc.
Yet the city and the wider Oxfordshire area does not exist in a bubble.
National challenges around the availability of innovation space, the affordability of housing, access to talent, the quality of the transport infrastructure, and the ability to adapt to changing investor expectations impact here as elsewhere.
Morgan Sindall Construction’s Thames Valley team gathered a group of stakeholders and innovators from across the Oxford science cluster to explore building on success - and to consider the most compelling question facing any region not content to rest on its laurels: ‘What’s next?’
🎥 Watch the short video: Oxford - the science and research opportunity
The University of Oxford has identified enterprise and innovation as fundamental to it research success and its positive impact on society. There is confidence that over the next decade, around 200 new science-based companies will be formed by researchers coming out of its labs.
Oxford has been very focused on the organic growth of its science and innovation base, but as the world’s leading university for science-based spin out companies, the city lags behind its competitors in providing quality space for them, meaning start start-ups may leave the area.
A range of infrastructure constraints cause frustration and act as a barrier to achieving more for Oxfordshire as a whole. Leadership that gets to grips with transport, planning, and housing will unlock development and accelerate progress.
Although there is natural competitiveness in the Golden Triangle, the arc is the same size geographically as Boston, a global centres of life science. Given that Oxford is competing on a global scale for investment, collaboration across the triangle will be pivotal in turning investor heads towards Oxford.
