UK's Prince Charles will formally open a new USD1.3bn research and development (R&D) facility of British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca Plc (LON:AZN), Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday.

The company's chief executive, Pascal Soriot, said in a statement: "Our new Discovery Centre in Cambridge raises the bar for sustainable R&D and global collaboration across our industry. It will allow us to break new boundaries in the understanding of disease biology, bring life-changing medicines to patients and power the next stage of our company's growth."

According to AstraZeneca, which has a large portfolio of treatments for diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, the centre would support research into specialised medicines and next-generation therapeutics, including gene-editing and cell therapies.

AstraZeneca, which has supplied two billion doses of its COVID-19 vaccine, is setting up a separate division for vaccine and antibody therapies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and has also boosted up other areas of research.