Evelina Grecenko from Estates Gazette has featured the London Cancer District this week, highlighting its role as a blueprint for future life sciences clusters in the UK. The article explores how the District is creating a globally competitive ecosystem that brings together life sciences companies, The Institute of Cancer Research, and The Royal Marsden to drive innovation, research, and collaboration.
You can read the full article below:
Life sciences is one of the sectors with the greatest growth potential over the next decade, according to the industrial strategy published last week by the UK Department for Business and Trade. Although the government has yet to reveal a bespoke sector plan, the developers behind the London Cancer District have suggested their strategy for the £1 billion specialist cluster may be reproduced at other sites across the UK.
The London Cancer District has already been named as a leader in cancer research in Europe. It will be the world’s largest cancer life sciences district, once its 12.4-acre expansion, delivered by Aviva Capital Partners and Socius, completes.
Estates Gazette caught up with the stakeholders at the campus to find out how the 10-year plan could help build a globally competitive, self-sustaining, life sciences ecosystem across the country, supporting entrepreneurs to scale and remain in the UK.
A place to start and grow
Last month, outline proposals spanning 974,500 sqft of research and laboratory space, designed by Gensler, were lodged with a move to add critical mass to the campus and help it to cater to innovators from the earliest stages.
The future spaces are expected to build on the success of the Innovation Gateway building, which opened in 2022 offering 6,300 sq ft of incubator space and 3,500 sq ft of labs. It has become home to precision oncology company Curesponse, biotech firm Epistemica, healthtech company Vesynta and anti-cancer targets discovery specialist Vortex Biotech.
The latter recently consolidated its operations to the UK, having closed its facilities in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in the US. The relocation was “a very attractive proposal”, said Paul Reeves, chief executive of Vortex, who told Estates Gazette that “it’s become so expensive over there to be where the action is. In the US, the compound costs on the periphery of the Silicon Valley, ‘and the periphery is still too expensive’, Reeves added.
“If we think about London, we find ourselves within the London Cancer District, on a campus with world-class preclinical and medical institutions, The Royal Marsden Hospital and The Institute for Cancer Research,” Reeves said. “In terms of location, it couldn’t be much better for us. But what we need, and what every life sciences company needs, is high-quality, purpose-built laboratory space – and there’s a shortage of wet lab space in London.”
Vortex was established 12 years ago at the University of California in Los Angeles, but hit its most recent pivot point in 2020, when it was acquired by Net Scientific and EMV Capital. The deal has helped the company to move its technology into commercialisation phase.
Reeves said: “We consider Vortex to still have a startup mentality, because we are on that commercial push right now, but we went through different phases of the business. Sometimes we needed to grow, sometimes we needed to contract, and a lot of life sciences companies face this challenge. Therefore, we’re looking for turnkey solutions so that we can move in and move out without a very long lease making growth or contraction more difficult than it needs to be.”
According to Reeves, lease flexibility is “quite common” in the US, but less so in the UK, with overseas competitors pushing to remove as many obstacles as possible, with involvement at both federal and the state level.
Reeves said: “[At Silicon Valley] it can be as simple as you take a metre of bench space, when you’re at the very early stages, and you can use millions of pounds worth of capex equipment in a core facility which is next door. Then, as you grow, you can take more bench space, or you can have your own dedicated lab. That’s the concept that would make life easier for a life sciences company in the UK.”
Enabling R&D
Through the proposed expansion of London Cancer District, the developers aim to move science occupiers away from the typical co-location model by creating spaces that encourage collaboration.
Olaide Oboh, managing director at Populate, an independently run place management company owned by Socius, told Estates Gazette: “What we really want is an ecosystem where people work together, and find the reasons to be next to one another. The difference between a cluster and an ecosystem is hope – that serendipitously you might all bump into each other and find ways to work. What we want to create is the infrastructure that enables people to collaborate.”
Populate is working with the Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden Hospital, which sit within the London Cancer District, encouraging them to be more open and allow the existing and future companies on site to use their unique milling rooms as well as get access to clinical trials and tissue culture.
Oboh added: “I think what those institutions have seen is that they can only grow to a limit before they need the private sector to come in and work with them, for them to also grow and thrive.
“We’re running a physical space, Innovation Gateway, we’re managing that building and the tenants, supporting them in their growth ambitions, connecting them with Institute of Cancer Research and The Royal Marsden Hospital, but also with other parts of the science ecosystem across London.”
Driving innovation
Having mixed all the necessary ingredients to create a thriving innovation environment within a single specialist cluster, the next challenge is to make sure they’re interconnected.
Oboh said: “I think there’s not enough collaboration between the major science parts of the UK. We should be talking to one another; we should partner and work together so that we’ve got a united voice about what we think is important.”
Jon Wilkinson, director of business and innovation at the Institute of Cancer Research, added: “We’ve got researchers working in different labs, focused on their own thing, but when they come together new research ideas, collaborations and opportunities come forward. So creating an open, flexible and engaging framework for clinicians to come together with manufacturing people, data people, math-driven people, biologists, is key for the exciting stuff to happen.
“That’s one of the parts that government can do. I think the other bit is if we look at the base of the research we’ve got in the UK, it’s globally competitive but the size of investment through the different stages to grow companies tends to be a bit smaller.”
So far, the UK government has committed to support development of the innovation sectors through increased funding for small- and medium-sized enterprises as well as investment in technology training, engineering, digital and defence skills. The industry is awaiting the bespoke Life Sciences Sector Plan to guide further growth journey through to 2035.
