AstraZeneca makes surprise U-turn with £300m pharma investment

Britain’s biggest drugmaker AstraZeneca has said it will invest £300m in the UK in a surprise U-turn after pausing large-scale projects last year. The drugmaker had pulled back projects in Britain after becoming disillusioned with the business environment, including the availability of new medicines on the NHS and drug pricing. On Wednesday, it said it would invest in two existing sites at Cambridge and Macclesfield. Keir Starmer announced the investment in the House of Commons, saying the move would protect jobs. AstraZeneca will complete the construction of the Rosalind Franklin building on its Cambridge campus, where it has its headquarters. It will also build a “lab of the future” that will use digital and data tools to advance drug development at its Macclesfield site, Soriot said. Last September, Astra paused a £200m investment in Cambridge, which followed the scrapping in January of plans to invest £450m in its vaccine manufacturing facility at Speke, Merseyside, citing a cut in government support, after months of negotiations. Starmer said: “Today I can announce a significant new investment, by AstraZeneca, investing £300m in UK life sciences, made possible by the pharmaceutical arrangement we have struck with the United States, to future-proof thousands of jobs in Macclesfield and in Cambridge. …