Who funded the research behind the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine?

  1. Samuel Cross
  2. Yeanuk Rho
  3. Henna Reddy
  4. Toby Pepperrell
  5. Florence Rodgers
  6. Rhiannon Osborne
  7. Ayolola Eni-Olotu
  8. Rishi Banerjee
  9. Sabrina Wimmer
  10. Sarai Keestra

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Abstract

The Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, Vaxzevira or Covishield) builds on two decades of research and development (R&D) into chimpanzee adenovirus-vectored vaccine (ChAdOx) technology at the University of Oxford. This study aimed to approximate the funding for the R&D of ChAdOx and the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine and to assess the transparency of funding reporting mechanisms.

Methods

We conducted a scoping review and publication history analysis of the principal investigators to reconstruct R&D funding the ChAdOx technology. We matched award numbers with publicly accessible grant databases. We filed freedom of information (FOI) requests to the University of Oxford for the disclosure of all grants for ChAdOx R&D.

Results

We identified 100 peer-reviewed articles relevant to ChAdOx technology published between January 2002 and October 2020, extracting 577 mentions of funding bodies from acknowledgements. Government funders from overseas (including the European Union) were mentioned 158 times (27.4%), the UK government 147 (25.5%) and charitable funders 138 (23.9%). Grant award numbers were identified for 215 (37.3%) mentions; amounts were publicly available for 121 (21.0%). Based on the FOIs, until December 2019, the biggest funders of ChAdOx R&D were the European Commission (34.0%), Wellcome Trust (20.4%) and Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (17.5%). Since January 2020, the UK government contributed 95.5% of funding identified. The total identified R&D funding was £104 226 076 reported in the FOIs and £228 466 771 reconstructed from the literature search.

Conclusion

Our study approximates that public and charitable financing accounted for 97%–99% of identifiable funding for the ChAdOx vaccine technology research at the University of Oxford underlying the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine until autumn 2020. We encountered a lack of transparency in research funding reporting.

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  1. Version published to 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007321
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.08.21255103: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Our search strategies (Supplementary File 1) were developed in collaboration with an academic librarian from Imperial College London, and included Medline and Embase database searches for all publications mentioning the ChAdOx technology.
    Medline
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)
    Embase
    suggested: (EMBASE, RRID:SCR_001650)
    To identify further articles, we conducted a PubMed search of the complete publication history of S.G and A.H, the primary investigators of the ChAdOx technology at the Jenner Institute.
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Due to insufficient identifiable information that could link the two datasets, we were not able to cross-match the funding reported in academic articles and the FOIs, which is a major limitation of our study. Furthermore, exact grant amounts were retrievable from publicly available information for only 21.0% of grants mentioned in academic publications on ChAdOx. Receiving funding information through FOIs was largely successful, making it a useful method for reconstructing funders of R&D at public research institutions. The restriction we faced was the maximum amount of 18 hours a public institution in the U.K. is legally required to spend collecting the data, limiting the scope of these requests. It is therefore likely that we missed further public funding received by other departments of the University of Oxford working on the clinical trials and manufacturing of the vaccine. For example, grants to research groups working on the manufacturing of ChAdOx, such as the one led by Dr. Alexander Douglas at the Nuffield Department of Medicine[19], were not included in the FOI. However, some of these grants are captured within the funding acknowledgement statements in peer-reviewed articles, which did cover other research groups at the University of Oxford as well. By applying a methodology that included data collection through two different mechanisms, this should have captured most of the R&D costs of the fundamental research into the ChAdOx technology conducted at the Jenner Ins...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.08.21255103v1 on medRxiv