Royal celebrities came to the opening of the new headquarters and research center.

Prince Charles honored the pharmaceutical company with his visit, and Minister of Economics Kwasi Kwarteng also made a pilgrimage to Cambridge when the futuristic “Discovery Center” on the modern university campus south of the old city center was finally opened last week after eight years of construction.

In the entrance, Prince Charles was waiting for a glass sculpture of the corona virus.

Philip Plickert

Business correspondent based in London.

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The new headquarters is a milestone for the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company. The Discovery Center cost a billion pounds (1.2 billion euros). From above, the glass and steel building, designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, looks like a donut with a hole in the middle. More than 2,200 scientists will work here in the future and develop new drugs.

CEO Pascal Soriot raves about the research strength of his company. The move of the R&D departments from the northern English province and from Sweden to the Cambridge Science Center eight years ago has strengthened them. With 80,000 employees around the world, AstraZeneca is just one of the top ten pharmaceutical companies in the world. His drugs for respiratory, cardiovascular, diabetes and especially cancer are selling well. The drug with the highest sales is the lung cancer drug Tagrisso. Analysts highlight the strong market share in China in particular. "There are many heavy smokers there and consequently many customers for the lung cancer drug Tagrisso," says a German analyst. AstraZeneca generates around 20 percent of its sales of probably 35 billion dollars this year in the Middle Kingdom,this is considered a top value in the western pharmaceutical industry.

The past twelve months have been a turbulent time for AstraZeneca, which has also brought low blows.

At first it looked like a triumph that the British company would produce the corona vaccine developed in Oxford and start the immunization campaign on the island earlier than anywhere else.

AstraZeneca had little previous experience with vaccines.

But then production and delivery difficulties triggered bitter disputes with the EU.

There were also reports of side effects and declining effectiveness.

Confidence in the vaccine sank.

In many European countries it is burned in terms of reputation and is hardly used anymore.

Oxford vaccine is very popular in emerging markets

“AstraZeneca didn't cover itself with fame with the vaccine,” says an analyst and pharmaceutical industry expert at a large German bank. “A reputation hole has been created through inept communication.” The name has been damaged in the EU. So far, AstraZeneca has only made a little more than $ 2 billion from the vaccine this year, but has purposely made no profit, unlike BioNTech / Pfizer and Moderna, whose registers are ringing. Pfizer expects corona vaccine sales of $ 39 billion next year, AstraZeneca is only expected to generate a tenth of that. In the future, the British will move away from the “non-profit” model, but only “moderate” profits are expected.

The Oxford fabric has been produced in more than 1.6 billion cans so far, in India by the Serum Institute.

About two thirds of the Oxford vaccines are bought by developing and emerging countries, who value them because the vaccine is significantly cheaper and easier to use than the mRNA substances from Pfizer or Moderna.

AstraZeneca will set up its own vaccines division.

This is also where the newly developed antibody drug for Covid sufferers is produced.

Some analysts speculate that this division may one day be floated on the stock exchange.

Alexion will now be integrated into the group

The most important project for Soriot from a strategic perspective was the takeover of the American biotech company Alexion, a specialist in very rare diseases, especially autoimmune diseases. The British paid an impressive 39 billion dollars for the purchase. It was one of the largest acquisitions in the pharmaceutical market in a long time. Some investors were a little shocked by the high price. For AstraZeneca, the takeover is the most important step since the merger of the Swedish Astra and the British Zeneca a good two decades ago.

The Boston company Alexion will now be integrated into the group. It offers drugs against autoimmune diseases, some of which only affect a few hundred people. Therapy with his main drug Soliris costs around $ 600,000 a year. Despite the very small number of cases, this is a billion dollar business in America. However, patent protection expires in the middle of the decade. Alexion has eleven other projects in the pipeline, so they're currently being researched and clinically tested. Alexion has just over $ 6 billion in sales this year. It remains to be seen whether the purchase of the Boston-based specialty drug developer will actually meet all expectations.

When Pascal Soriot became head of AstraZeneca in late 2012, he soon had to fight off a hostile takeover by Pfizer in 2014.

At the time, Pfizer was offering £ 55 per share, nearly £ 70 billion for the whole group.

For a long time Soriot did not succeed in noticeably growing beyond this.

Five years later, the price bobbed around the Pfizer offer.

In the meantime, however, Soriot's focus on research and new drugs, which have put the group on a growth path, is paying off.

The share price has risen 35 percent over the past three years.

With a current market value of a good 130 billion pounds, AstraZeneca has left its traditional British competitor GlaxoSmithKline far behind and is at the top of the UK's listed companies.