UK life sciences business incubation services provider BioCity Nottingham Ltd has been appointed to establish a new centre for bioscience companies at AstraZeneca’s Alderley Park location in Cheshire. The BioHub will initially provide 36,000 sq ft of laboratory and office facilities for early-stage and developing companies engaged in innovative drug discovery and development. The first three tenant companies moved onto the site earlier this week. AstraZeneca recently announced that research and development work will no longer be carried out at the Alderley Park site and that such work will relocate to other AstraZeneca sites.

The BioCity management team has worked with AstraZeneca since late 2012 to look into the feasibility of creating a specialist centre for the next generation of life science companies. With this agreement in place, BioCity now has a presence in three of the main UK life science centres, having established BioCity Nottingham in 2003 and BioCity Scotland in 2012. Nottingham is the location for more than 75 early-stage businesses and BioCity Scotland currently supports 13 tenant companies. The organisation has worked with global pharmaceutical partners such as Merck, Sharp & Dohme, and now AstraZeneca, to transform these facilities to benefit companies, open up investment opportunities and add value to regional economies.

In addition to providing the BioHub laboratory and office accommodation, AstraZeneca is providing tenant companies access to meeting rooms and conference facilities. Tenants will also be able to rent highly specialised technical equipment and services. The first three tenants to move on site are Blueberry Therapeutics Ltd, Imagen Biotech Ltd and Redx Anti-Infectives Limited, a subsidiary of Redx Pharma.