Charles attends opening of UK AstraZeneca center

Prince Charles praised Cambridge as a center of scientific collaboration on Tuesday as the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca opened a 1.34 billion USD research center, hoping to build on work in developing one of the first COVID-19 vaccines. The 19,000 square-meter complex near the University of Cambridge will house more than 2,200 research scientists.

It joins a cluster of businesses seeking to make Cambridge a hub for life sciences research similar to what California’s Silicon Valley is for the technology industry. AstraZeneca worked with Oxford University to develop one of the first COVID-19 vaccines approved by regulators in the U.K., European Union and other countries.