TY - JOUR T1 - Who funded the research behind the Oxford–AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine? JF - BMJ Global Health JO - BMJ Global Health DO - 10.1136/bmjgh-2021-007321 VL - 6 IS - 12 SP - e007321 AU - Samuel Cross AU - Yeanuk Rho AU - Henna Reddy AU - Toby Pepperrell AU - Florence Rodgers AU - Rhiannon Osborne AU - Ayolola Eni-Olotu AU - Rishi Banerjee AU - Sabrina Wimmer AU - Sarai Keestra Y1 - 2021/12/01 UR - http://gh.bmj.com/content/6/12/e007321.abstract N2 - Objectives 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.Data are available in a public, open access repository. All datasets are available as supplementary to this article or on WhatDoTheyKnow.com under the title "Breakdown of funding for the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine". Any quieries and requests for raw data should be addressed to the corresponding author Ms Sarai Keestra at s.m.keestra@amsterdamumc.nl. ER -