British pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has announced a £300 million investment across two UK sites, reversing a period of stalled large-scale projects driven by dissatisfaction with the domestic business environment, including NHS drug pricing and medicine availability, according to The Guardian.

The investment unfreezes a previously paused £200 million expansion at the company's Cambridge campus and commits an additional £100 million to its Macclesfield site. AstraZeneca employs 10,000 people across the UK, with more than 4,000 in Cambridge and a similar number in Macclesfield.

At Cambridge, AstraZeneca will complete construction of a new office building named after scientist Rosalind Franklin, consolidating scientists including data analysts and molecular researchers currently based across several other buildings. At Macclesfield, the company will build a laboratory of the future using digital and data tools to advance drug development, creating new scientific jobs at the site.

Pascal Soriot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, thanked the UK government for improving patient access, citing four new drug approvals since the start of the year, and said the company looks forward to further enhancing the reimbursement environment to build a strong life sciences sector.

The investment follows a UK-US trade agreement on pharmaceutical pricing struck in December, which spared UK pharmaceutical companies from trade tariffs. Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the investment in the House of Commons, attributing it to the pharmaceutical arrangement with the United States.

The UK commitment is nonetheless significantly smaller in scale than AstraZeneca's $50 billion (€46.3 billion) US investment announced last October and its $15 billion (€13.9 billion) programme in China.

Read the complete report for comprehensive details on AstraZeneca's UK investment reversal and site expansion plans.