Babraham Research Campus

Emerging biotechnology companies, supported by BBT's (Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd) Bioincubator have been present on the Babraham Research Campus since the mid-eighties. Babraham’s Bioincubator provides 72,500 square feet of serviced facilities and expertise to support new bioventures and catalyse the commercial exploitation of biomedical research. Ventures must be developing technologies or products of relevance to human healthcare and the pharmaceutical sector, with potential synergy with the Institute's science base. The site is now home to 30 early-stage biomedical and healthcare companies.

A unique offering of the Babraham model is access to both the world-class research of the Babraham Institute as well as state-of-the-art scientific facilities, bench space and capital equipment through its new Technology Development Laboratory (TDL), a fully-equipped biology and chemistry laboratory. This pioneering concept was designed to accelerate the translation of early-stage concepts and technologies into viable commercial propositions. It does so by providing access either to equipment, facilities or procurement of TDL research staff to undertake the work.

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