THE venture, jointly funded by the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills; GlaxoSmithKline; the Wellcome Trust; the East of England Development Agency; and the Technology Strategy Board, is a £38m independent bioscience facility which aims to provide small biotech and life sciences companies and start-ups with access to the expertise, networks and scientific facilities traditionally associated with multinational pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Martino joins the project from the Univeristy of Manchester Incubator Company where he was Managing Director since 2003.
Construction on the development has already begun and foremost amongst the aims of the SBC will be to pioneer a culture of open-innovation that will place the UK bioscience sector at the vanguard of worldwide biomedical discovery and deliver cutting edge healthcare solutions. As Managing Director of UMIC, Dr Picardo has overseen its development into a venture that has helped to support more than sixty start-ups and SMEs, attracting significant venture capital and generating more than 500 jobs.
The site has been designed to foster collaboration and interaction between tenant companies with the hope that the combination of opportunity and cooperation will breed innovation and commercial success. This will provide small biotech companies with new insights into their research and development activities and should help accelerate the progress from discovery to product development.
Long-term plans are to expand the campus by five fold from the first phase to the third phase. Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust, commented: "By creating an open environment to nurture collaboration and the sharing of ideas, we hope to accelerate the development of new products to improve human health."
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