As the world stood still in lockdown in April 2020, a group of Oxford researchers packed the cell cultures needed to make their experimental coronavirus vaccine and quietly shipped them to India’s Serum Institute.
The scientists were worried that the university’s prospective partner, AstraZeneca, eager to control the intellectual property behind the shot, would stop them, and that their vaccine would never reach the poorer nations that most needed it, according to three people with knowledge of the matter.
In the case of AstraZeneca, their fears would prove to be unfounded. Oxford and the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker have since signed a licensing deal with Serum and produced hundreds of millions of doses of the cheap, portable jab for middle and lower-income countries.