Annual General Meeting
Held at the offices of Oxford Biomedica at Windrush Court, Transport Way, Oxford OX4 6LT on 23 June 2020 at 3.00 p.m.
Any questions emailed to us are outlined below
Q What was the process of selecting Dr Roch Doliveux as the new Chairman
A. Under the auspices of the Nomination Committee an external agency was appointed to search for a new Chairman. The agency put forward several applicants, which were narrowed down to a short list of six candidates. The short list of candidates was subsequently interviewed by the Board. The Board decided that Dr Doliverux had all the experience and qualities which will make him an excellent Chairman of the Board.
Q. What are your plans for recruiting the new independent Non-Executive Directors
A. We have publicly announced that we are looking for two new Non-Executive Directors but we have decided to wait until the new Chairman is in place before initiating the search.
Q Is the Company planning to invest in products – not clear from the annual report
A. The Company intends to continue, dependent on finance, to invest in our proprietary products and pre-clinical pipeline whilst seeking to spin-out or out-licence those candidates at an appropriate time prior to large clinical expenditures as per our strategy.
Q. Noticed that the rights to Stargardt’s and Usher’s products have been returned from Sanofi – what are your plans
A. Oxford Biomedica has been informed by Sanofi that following completion of a company-wide portfolio review, Sanofi intends to return to Oxford Biomedica the rights to the following ophthalmology gene therapy programmes: SAR422459 for Stargardt disease and SAR421869 for Usher’s Syndrome type 1b. This follows the Group’s announcement in February 2019 that Sanofi had informed Oxford Biomedica that it intended to seek a new partner for these two programmes which were originally partnered by Oxford Biomedica to Sanofi back in 2009.
The timing of return of these programmes and operational details are yet to be determined. However, when the rights to the two programmes are returned, Oxford Biomedica will undertake its own internal evaluation to determine the potential future for these programmes and decide whether to commit further resources to them.
Q. What is the Company’s role in the COVID vaccine project – will it distract from the Company’s normal business.
A. In April, Oxford Biomedica announced that it had joined a consortium including the Jenner Institute in relation to the potential for large scale manufacture of AZD1222.
In May, Oxford Biomedica signed a one year Clinical & Commercial Supply Agreement with AstraZeneca. The Agreement relates to the GMP manufacture of the adenovirus vector based COVID-19 vaccine candidate, AZD1222, which recently entered clinical trials at multiple sites in the UK. Oxford Biomedica is working alongside AstraZeneca and other manufacturing organisations to provide large scale manufacturing capacity for this vaccine candidate.
The production will be from one of Oxford Biomedica’s recently approved GMP suites in Oxbox and as a result the Company believes that it will not distract it from our normal business.
Q. How many further deals should we expect in 2020? Is there a healthy appetite in the market?
A. We are confident more deals will be concluded in the next 12 months. However, owing to the size of these, timing of these cannot be guaranteed. We have continued to see substantial increase in the level of interest via our BD team over the last year.