AstraZeneca Research Campus To Become Multicompany Bioscience Center

Three U.K. biotech firms are moving to BioHub, a new bioscience center at AstraZeneca’s Alderley Park research campus near Manchester, England. The influx comes less than two months after AstraZeneca disclosed that it is ending research at Alderley Park and moving the site’s 1,600 scientists to other locations.

Redx Pharma, a Liverpool, England-based drug discovery and development firm, is creating a subsidiary, Redx Anti-Infectives, that will locate in BioHub. The new business will establish a $16 million R&D center where a team of 119 scientists will develop drugs for combating antibiotic resistance and new medicines for viral infections. Redx has secured a $7 million grant from the U.K. government’s Regional Growth Fund. AstraZeneca “made a compelling commercial case to attract us to Alderley Park,” says Redx CEO Neil Murray.

Imagen Biotech, a drug discovery firm and provider of screening technologies for the pharmaceutical industry, and Blueberry Therapeutics, a drug discovery firm targeting medicines for unmet medical needs, have already moved to Alderley Park. With assistance from a government task force, AstraZeneca plans to attract more science companies to the site.

Plans to repurpose Alderley Park as a biotech hub are similar to those that followed Pfizer’s 2011 closure of an R&D campus in Sandwich, England, a move that eliminated about 1,500 science jobs. More than a dozen biotech firms have since moved to the Sandwich site, where benefits include company tax relief.