Babraham Bioscience ties up funding for Bioincubator with EEDA injection
The East of England Development Agency (EEDA) said today it had agreed to contribute £2m as a grant towards the construction of a new £7m Bioincubator on the Babraham Research Campus.
The rest of the funds have been supplied by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd (BBT).
Construction of the building, to be called Meditrina after the Roman goddess of medicine, will start in September.
Meditrina will provide accommodation and business support for 10-14 companies, hen it opens in September next year, in 20,500 square feet of customised laboratory and office space creating 18 units for start-up and early stage bioventures.
BBT is the wholly-owned trading subsidiary of the Babraham Institute (part of the Babraham Group) and manages its knowledge transfer remit. It promotes and leads partnerships bringing together all the elements needed to exploit life sciences.
Based on the foundations provided by the Babraham Institute's world renowned research, its facilities and its geographical location within the heart of the Cambridge Cluster of high tech firms, BBT says it looks to provide a holistic approach to knowledge transfer, coalescing scientific, technological and commercial excellence.
Bioincubator at full capacity
The Babraham Bioincubator has operated at full capacity since 2001 and this now includes its Minerva building which took its first tenant in September 2005 and which was officially opened last month.
EEDA chief executive David Marlow (pictured) said: "Babraham BioConcepts has been enormously successfully in the last three years. Our 'hub' programme is designed to help improve the commercialisation and exploitation of research and development, and also provide businesses with improved linkages to higher education and larger, research-intensive corporate businesses in the same field.
"Babraham's achievement has been to get the best individuals and small firms to set up at their centre and they have given them the space to grow and develop - a philosophy which is at the very heart of EEDA's hopes for enterprise hubs".
6th July 2006
