AstraZeneca opens research center as UK builds science hub
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LONDON (AP) — Prince Charles is praising Cambridge as a center of scientific collaboration as the pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca opened a 1 billion-pound ($1.34 billion) research center there on Tuesday. AstraZeneca hopes the facility will build on work in developing one of the first COVID-19 vaccines. The 19,000 square-meter (more than 200,000 square-foot) 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’s COVID-19 vaccine is widely used across the world and the company plans to ask the Food and Drug Administration to approve it for use in the United States.