AstraZeneca reveals Cambridge plans
pharmafile | July 21, 2014 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | AstraZeneca, Cambridge, cbc, research, silicon fen
AstraZeneca’s new international HQ on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), due to open in two years’ time, will feature an R&D ‘enabling’ building, a central courtyard and a great deal of glass.
The latter comes in the see-through walls which will separate the high technology labs on the site from other work spaces to promote ‘visible science’, the company insists.
This will ensure “scientific innovation is the primary focus for all staff, both in R&D and other functions”, AstraZeneca says in a statement.
The move is part of a wider restructure of AstraZeneca’s global operations which is designed to improve the productivity of its R&D operations: as well as the new R&D centre and HQ in the UK, it will add to existing sites in the US (Gaithersburg, Maryland) and Sweden (Mölndal near Gothenburg) by 2016.
Construction is set to begin early next year on the Cambridge facility, whose cost when the plans were announced last year was estimated at £330 million. Making public the designs is part of a consultation process before a detailed planning application is made in the autumn.
In what the designers say is a nod to Cambridge’s architectural heritage, the site will be low rise and will include a central courtyard, such as the ones found in the city’s university colleges.
“Our aim is to create an open, welcoming and vibrant centre that will inspire our teams and partners to push the boundaries of scientific innovation,” says Mene Pangalos, executive VP, innovative medicines & early development at AstraZeneca.
It will house AstraZeneca’s small molecule and biologics R&D activity, plus the biologics research and protein engineering carried out by the company’s biologics arm MedImmune – which already employs 500 people at the city’s Granta Park.
“With our combined AstraZeneca and MedImmune portfolios we are already uniquely positioned to explore the promise of combination therapies in transforming the way patients are treated,” says Bahija Jallal, MedImmune’s executive VP.
Around 70 AstraZeneca staff have already relocated to interim facilities in Cambridge – at the Melbourn Science Park, Cambridge Science Park and Granta Park – and by the end of the year the firm says up to 400 of its people will be working in the city.
In May AstraZenneca announced it was joining forces with the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) – a part of Cambridge University – to help discover new medicines at an early stage of development.
AstraZeneca will contribute up to £6 million and MRC LMB up to £3 million over five years, as well as in-kind scientific input.
AstraZeneca and the MRC are also to create the AstraZeneca MRC UK Centre for Lead Discovery, which will sit within the new Cambridge site – and the manufacturer has entered a collaboration with the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute to put up to 60 scientists into the Institute’s labs on the CBC over the next three years.
Adam Hill
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