Emerging biotechnology companies, supported by BBT's (Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd) Bioincubator and BioConcepts programmes, have been present on the Babraham Research Campus since the mid-eighties. The site is now home to 21 such companies in the Bioincubator and 3 in the BioConcepts facilities.

In the last three years we have taken a proactive approach to developing the themes outlined in the 1998 DTI White Paper "Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Driven Economy". Babraham BioConcepts, a technology-accelerator scheme built on the success of BBT's bioincubation activities, was launched in April 2003. These programmes have received support from the DTI and EEDA.

We are a creating a larger knowledge-driven campus that will expand our already significant contribution to the Cambridge Cluster of Bioscience ventures.

The Babraham Research Campus:

• promotes bio-enterprise by creating a focussed synergistic micro-cluster of scientists who can talk the same language across the academe-commerce interface;
  
  
• provides a culture and environment in which both Institute scientists and entrepreneurs can flourish. This encompasses research aimed at understanding the function of genes (post- or functional genomics) and includes new disciplines such as proteomics;
  
  
• enables companies on the Babraham Research Campus to make the best use of their resources by providing our unique portfolio of support services from business mentoring to skills training and specialist technical services.

Work on the first BioDevelopment Building is underway and on schedule, with practical completion expected in February 2005. The building is specifically designed to accommodate biology and chemistry laboratory facilities. The space available is 20,785sq.ft available as units of 3,000 - 10,000 sq.ft.

Representation of BioDevelopment Buildings 1 and 2