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News - Life Sciences

The newly-merged Merck-Schering pharma powerhouse is said to have Cambridge on its radar for a major new facility.

It is understood that London property agents have been retained to find a base of between 80,000 and 100,000 sq ft, with Cambridge one of the prime locations under review. The company has not responded to requests to comment.

Cambridge’s cause has been helped by the strength of the dollar against sterling – one of the main reasons that Pfizer has retained Cambridge as one of a handful of global research hubs after absorbing Wyeth – and why it has also scaled up its regenerative medicine base in Cambridge.

Merck has a number of research areas that fit like a glove with Cambridge’s MedTech strengths, principally work in the cardiovascular arena but also in neuro-degenerative disease, oncology and even vaccines. Having spent $41 bn on acquiring Schering, Merck is not about to stint on research outlay.

The new Cambridge BioMed campus being built at the Addenbrooke’s Hospital site is providing Cambridge with huge global leverage at the moment while companies such as Pfizer, Illumina and Gilead scale up at Granta Park and Chesterford Research Park. Business Weekly also understands that an Indian Life Sciences business is seeking 20,000 sq ft of healthcare space locally.

Overseas appetite to camp in the Cambridge MedTech cluster is underpinning a remarkable bounceback for Europe’s No.1 biotech hub. After hitting rock bottom for general funding in the last two years, a number of headline deals in the last few days have highlighted a robust revival.

In the latest, Cambridge personalised medicine company Horizon Discovery, which scooped both the top UK company and best tech start up prizes in the Government’s new iawards on Monday night, followed up in spectacular fashion by announcing an eight-figure deal with pharma giant, Novartis just 24 hours later.

Horizon has entered into a four-year strategic collaboration with Novartis – the second deal between the companies. The new deal sees the use of Horizon’s proprietary GENESIS gene-engineering platform to develop a broad panel of custom generated genetically-defined human ‘X-MAN’ cancer models for deployment in Novartis’s drug discovery research programs. 

PanGenetics says there is solid interest from potential buyers in its autoimmune drug target for the treatment of psoriatic arthritis following a £100 million deal to sell its other lead target to Abbott Laboratories.  CEO Kevin Johnson is not surprised by the bio bounce. He said: “You just need to look at what’s been announced recently, a big antibody deal with Bristol-Myers Squibb and locally Astex. I also know from other business meetings that there is a lot of activity that has not emerged from the pipe, as well as a lot of activity in the VC community. There are more fund raising rounds being done internally, which really focuses the VCs on which companies it will continue with; it forces a rationalisation of their portfolio.”

Harriet Fear, chief executive of the region’s biotech gatekeeper, ERBI, added: “Several factors are involved in the resurgence: The likes of Astex have the full range of skills – exceptional management, science, research etc – the old adage that for the right product and the right market there will always be money/investment available. 

“It just depends on how much resource you have to put into working on it and building relationships for the hard times I also think that a number of companies have been putting in the really hard work since long ago when the recession first started to rear its ugly head – thinking in new and creative ways about how to sustain their businesses – and some of those labours are paying dividends.

“When I was in Boston for the MassBIO Investor Forum in October there was a very buoyant mood generally – over £3 billion invested so far this year – and at BIO Europe there were over 12,000 partnering meetings, which all boosts the feelgood factor in the industry globally.”

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