Oxford Biomedica plc opened Oxford Biomedica's new 84,000 sq ft manufacturing facility Oxbox based in Oxford, UK. Oxbox was originally built to solely service the Group's growing demand for lentiviral vectors in the fast growing cell and gene therapy market where it is a leading global specialist working with multiple partners including Novartis, BMS and Sanofi. The Oxbox facility was completed at the end of 2019 with the Group expecting to have one or potentially two of the manufacturing suites approved during 2020. In April 2020 the Group joined the Oxford Vaccine Consortium and shortly afterwards signed the first of two agreements with AstraZeneca for COVID-19 vaccine production. By October 2020, the Group had four manufacturing suites approved by the MHRA, three of which were contracted by AstraZeneca and are currently producing bulk vaccine at 1000L scale.