US genetics powerhouse Illumina is pressing ahead with a new European headquarters in Cambridge UK, shrugging off unsubstantiated takeover speculation.

Work on a new £60 million facility at Granta Park – set to employ up to 500 staff – could begin late this week or early next, Business Weekly can disclose.

And Granta Park director Doug Cuff, who is spearheading impressive development at the life science and technology hub for US owner BioMed Realty, says global appetite for space in the Cambridge cluster continues unabated by either market rumour or Brexit.

With Grade A laboratory and office space at a premium in the in-demand Cambridge cluster, Granta Park is sitting on a veritable honeypot. Illumina and fellow US company Gilead are each developing major expansion space at Granta Park.

Cuff tells me there is currently 250,000 sq ft under development and reports continuing international interest. Illumina has seen its share price spike on unsubstantiated reports that it has received a $30 billion bid by compatriot Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., which is headquartered in Massachusetts.

Leading analysts are sceptical about any bid for Illumina from Thermo Fisher Scientific succeeding because of immense regulatory hurdles given their respective positions in the genome sequencing space.

Illumina owns two Cambridge companies – Solexa and BlueGnome – and has signed a 20-year lease for a 155,000 sq ft new research building at Granta Park. The Solexa deal, acquiring genome automation technology, racked up to around $650 million while genomics diagnostics specialist BlueGnome was acquired for an undisclosed, but considerably more modest, sum.

The new state-of-the-art, build-to-suit laboratory building at Granta Park will serve as the new European headquarters for Illumina. Doug Cuff says his California-headquartered company sees a bright future in Cambridge for Illumina and other life science players.

He said: “I was at Illumina’s corporate headquarters last week and its plans for Cambridge are proceeding at a pretty good clip. They are very bullish about Cambridge and it is full steam ahead. We expect them to be in situ early in 2018.” Gilead, a research-based biopharmaceutical company that discovers, develops and commercialises innovative medicines in areas of unmet medical need, is well advanced with a new-build £28 million facility at Granta Park.

The expansion increases Gilead’s lease on the space to 93,000 sq ft as it progresses a portfolio of products and pipeline of investigational drugs including treatments for HIV/AIDS, liver diseases, cancer, inflammatory and respiratory diseases, and cardiovascular conditions.

Cuff said the project was going “incredibly well” and Gilead should be fully operational from the expanded facility by June 2017. Granta Park is a partnership between TWI and BioMed Realty offering dedicated facilities on a site spanning 120 acres.

Cuff tells me that TWI will additionally be marketing space for pre-lets for relevant tech companies. He sees echoes in Cambridge UK’s emergence as an in-demand centre for global life science in the powerplay by Cambridge Massachusetts 10 years ago.

“Cambridge Mass pushed itself to fill a space between MIT and Harvard and succeeded; since then the market has exploded and I believe Cambridge UK and Granta Park are in a great position to exploit clear and demonstrable international demand for space in this region.”

Cuff believes the vote for Brexit and Takeda’s decision to close its Cambridge research facilities will have negligible impact on the continued growth of the cluster. “Takeda’s decision came as a surprise but it covers a relatively limited footprint in the Cambridge cluster; also, just as with Pfizer’s downscaling last year, the life science sector is fantastic at recycling jobs. People laid off by Takeda, as with Pfizer, will find jobs with other buoyant companies locally.

“There is a strong appetite among growing companies in life sciences locally to snap up talent being disposed of elsewhere. Cambridge has a world-class university and a global reputation for producing amazing science & technology talent.

“The predominant factor in the local life science market is one of growth – from companies such as Illumina, Gilead and AstraZeneca. These companies come to Cambridge for the talent on the doorstep, emanating from the university and spin-off companies.

“And the university has been around stimulating the economy, producing science & technology innovation and breeding talent for a lot longer than the European Union.

“In sectors other than life sciences you have seen companies like Apple and Amazon coming into Cambridge and pushing ahead – so Brexit may have created uncertainty but has not halted expansion strategies.

“BioMed Realty is used to facilitating major growth across science & technology sectors and we see no let-up in demand for Cambridge UK space. The lure of the cluster is enhanced when you see a $31 billion offer come in for ARM from SoftBank in Japan.

“One can envisage nothing but a huge potential payback for Cambridge from the convergence of healthcare, bioinformatics and genomics technologies – and from cross-pollination between life science, the Internet of Things and Big Data.”
 

Investment in Cambridge rail station as well as better and faster trains and services linking the key trade corridors of Norwich, Cambridge, Stansted and London are at the heart of a multimillion upgrade unveiled by Abellio – confirmed today as operator of the new East Anglian rail franchise.

The UK’s Department of Transport unveiled present incumbent Abellio as its chosen partner for the delivery of a long and eagerly awaited rail revolution for one of Europe’s hottest innovation regions – with effect from October 16.

The Cambridge science & technology cluster will be one of the major beneficiaries. Abellio operates the current franchise, which trades as Abellio Greater Anglia and connects London, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Suffolk and Norfolk.

The new, nine-year franchise will deliver a major package of improvements for rail services in the region, including:-
1 – Replacement of the entire fleet of trains with 1,043 new carriages, built by Bombardier in Derby (660 carriages) and Stadler in Switzerland (383 carriages). These will all be in service by the end of 2020.
2 – Investment of £60 million in stations, including the redevelopment of five stations: Cambridge, Broxbourne, Cheshunt, Harlow and Southend Victoria.
3 –  More services and faster journeys across the network, including two ‘Norwich in 90’ trains each way per day and average journey times to Ipswich falling from 73 to 64 minutes.
4 – Better connections, with Lowestoft linked directly to London by four trains each way per day, and Norwich to Cambridge services extended to Stansted Airport every hour.
5 – Faster services between Cambridge and London.
6 – Doubling the Peterborough to Ipswich service to hourly.
7 – Working with Network Rail to implement specific schemes to drive up performance and reliability throughout the franchise.
8 – 55 per cent more seats into London in the morning peak period, and 1,144 extra services per week on the network.
9 – A better ticketing system for customers, including extension of smartcards, the introduction of flexible ‘carnet’ tickets, lower fares on the Stansted Express and automatic Delay-Repay for season and advance purchase ticket holders.

Dominic Booth, managing director for Abellio UK said: “This is a very exciting time for the railways across the Greater Anglia region. We are delighted to be able to build on the hard work of all our colleagues at Abellio Greater Anglia over the past four years.

“This announcement will now enable us to deliver the world-class rail network that the region deserves. “Our ambitious plans, that include the replacement of the entire Greater Anglia fleet in the largest privately-funded train order in the UK, will give the people of the Greater Anglia region a railway that is unrecognisable from today.”

The new franchise will also deliver value for the taxpayer, with a £3.7 billion franchise payment delivered to the government by Abellio over the course of the franchise.

Customers will also see improvements in the first three years of the franchise before the new trains arrive. These include upgraded trains: in the first year of the franchise 30 4-carriage electric trains will be refurbished to include air conditioning, WiFi and new seats.

These will run from Southend, Braintree and Ipswich to London, providing much needed extra capacity. The remainder of the fleet will be refreshed at a cost of £10 million, improving the passenger environment and reliability of the trains; 27 of the existing trains will also undergo modifications to become fully accessible to disabled customers.

More than 70 additional carriages will be introduced in January 2017 to provide more capacity and more seats on West Anglia and Great Eastern Main Line routes.

All stations will be refreshed or refurbished and receive a deep clean with ticket machines and new digital customer information screens at every station. Nearly 1800 additional car parking spaces and 4000 additional cycling spaces will be provided across the network.

All trains which operate out of London Liverpool Street will be fitted with WiFi, and those trains currently with WiFi will have the system upgraded.
 

Gene editing world leader Horizon Discovery has thrown a lifeline to cell and molecular biologists set to lose their jobs in the impending closure of Takeda’s Cambridge Science Park research hub.

Takeda’s decision – forced by a change in R & D focus – to retrench to Japan and the US and quit the UK – coincides with Horizon doubling the size of its Cambridge headquarters and significantly expanding its cell biology and molecular biology capabilities over the coming months.

As news leaked of Takeda’s ‘Cambridge closure’ decision over the weekend, Horizon CEO Dr Darrin Disley stepped in to offer: “I would positively encourage applications from biologists who find themselves laid off.”

Horizon is finding itself increasingly in demand internationally as it pursues its personalised medicines focus and is urgently seeking molecular biology and cell biology expertise to service client and internal projects.

Takeda is looking to close Cambridge and other UK operations by the end of this year – a decision that has stunned life science & technology observers who had been lauding the escalation of its Science Park facilities only recently.

One source told me: “No-one saw this coming – particularly as Takeda has heavily invested in Cambridge and the Japanese are always on top of their five-year plans and projections.”

Parent Takeda Pharmaceuticals needs to find an estimated $725 million to build a new pipeline of drugs so has to streamline its global operations.

The company revealed that it will be consulting with staff on a proposed closure in Cambridge and management insisted the decision had nothing to do with the Brexit vote.

The news of Takeda’s impending departure also throws fresh light on the proposed $31 billion takeover of Cambridge technology great ARM Holdings by the Japanese group SoftBank.

The Japanese corporate culture is to engage cautiously but once engaged to commit to ventures long term – a concept that Takeda would appear to have torpedoed.

Horizon Discovery is quoted on the London Stock Exchange and its reputation in the global scientific community as the ‘go to’ cell builder is soaring.

The company has twice won Business Weekly’s coveted Business of the Year title among a host of global awards and is investing massively in its Cambridge Research Park facilities and personnel.

Its own growth offers a number of employment opportunities and continues the Cambridge cluster’s track record of ‘recycling’ life science jobs that would otherwise be lost abroad.

• Cell and molecular biologists across the cluster or globally can email Dr Disley – Darrin.Disley [at] horizondiscovery.com
 

Strategic early investment has paid off for Cambridge Enterprise in the past year with four big successes: X01 Limited, VocalIQ, Cambridge CMOS Sensors Ltd and Cambridge Epigenetix, writes Tony Raven, CEO of Cambridge Enterprise, the University of Cambridge’s commercialisation arm.

They all validate a strategy of putting small amounts of capital into excellent ideas, very early in their commercialisation.

These four successes follow in the tradition of companies like university spin-out Solexa, which has made routine human genome sequencing an everyday reality. Started with a £100,000 seed investment from Cambridge Enterprise, Solexa was acquired by San Diego-based Illumina, Inc., in 2007.

Five years later Illumina snapped up another University spin-out, BlueGnome, which was started with a £75,000 Cambridge Enterprise seed investment. Today Illumina is a $30 billion company and has approximately 80 per cent of the global market share of gene and genome sequencing technology.

As we approach our 10th anniversary in December, Cambridge Enterprise is building on these successes and working to expand follow-on support for highly promising young companies.

We are joined by our sister organisation, Cambridge Innovation Capital, a preferred investor of Cambridge University, which focuses on Cambridge companies that have received seed funding from early-stage investors and are seeking further funding to support growth.

The hallmark of our work is not just strategic investment early on but also ongoing support as companies grow. We have the advantage of being able to invest over the long-term in a way that most venture capital, limited-life funds cannot. This long-range perspective allows us to stick with companies from initial conception to ultimate success.

Thinking about the long-term also makes us ideally suited to support complex innovations, like drugs, that can take decades to get to market. 
The end result of this long-range outlook and funding is not only great companies but also great societal benefits, such as improved education and bringing solar electricity to remote African villages.

Supporting innovation for the benefit of society is deep in the DNA of Cambridge University. Its first spin-out, in 1534, was Cambridge University Press. 
The world’s oldest publisher, CUP is still going strong, with a turnover of £269 million in 2016. It publishes over 50,000 titles by authors from over 100 countries, bringing literally millions of ideas to the world.

At Cambridge Enterprise business is booming with a number of exciting new projects which will continue to have great impact on our economy and our society in the future. 

Local technology ventures have been handed a massive boost after Cambridge Innovation Capital raised £75 million of new cash to invest in the UK cluster’s cream of innovation.

CIC is a preferred investor for the University of Cambridge and a Cambridge-based investor in technology and healthcare companies. Cambridge technology great ARM Holdings, the official investment body of the Sultanate of Oman and the much-vaunted Woodford Investment Fund are among new investors in the oversubscribed placing.

CIC was founded in 2013 as an initiative by the university to create a local entity able to provide growth capital to promising business ventures arising not only from the university but also the wider Cambridge Cluster, Europe’s largest technology heartland.

CIC provides long term capital to support the sustained growth of investee companies. It has a unique relationship with Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the university, including co-investment opportunities and access to pre-emption rights over companies arising out of the university.

CIC has already established an unrivalled position within the Cambridge cluster. To date, the plc has committed around £33m to 13 companies in the rapidly-growing technology and healthcare sectors.

The new funds raised will be used to provide additional investment to CIC’s current portfolio, to invest in new opportunities created at the University of Cambridge and within the Cambridge Cluster and to expand the CIC team to allow the company to capitalise on its strong inflow of new investment opportunities.

The oversubscribed round was supported by new investors including Woodford Investment Management acting as agent on behalf of certain discretionally managed funds, Winton Ventures, the Oman Investment Fund and other institutional investors and existing shareholders including University of Cambridge Endowment Fund, Lansdowne Partners, ARM and IP Group plc.

CIC is led by a strong and diverse board and management team. Edward Benthall is non-executive chairman and was chair of Cambridge Enterprise Ltd between 2010 and 2014.

CEO Victor Christou has 20 years of experience as both a venture capital investor and as an entrepreneur, founding and forming a spin out within an academic environment. Rob Sprawson, CIC’s CFO, has considerable professional and commercial experience especially in the healthcare, technology and IP commercialisation sectors.

Christou said: “We are delighted by the support we have received in this fundraising. Since the inception of CIC and its initial fundraising in 2013, the company has made significant progress within the Cambridge Cluster, one of the richest seams of scientific and technological innovation in the world.

“This additional capital will enable CIC to continue to support exciting IP-rich companies and we look forward to continuing to work very closely with the University of Cambridge and our network within the Cambridge area.”

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, added: “Over the last three years, CIC has grown and proven itself to be an integral part of the Cambridge ecosystem. The university is delighted to work with CIC as it continues its critical role in providing growth capital and support for the region and the country.”

Numis Securities Limited acted as sole financial adviser, broker and bookrunner in connection with the fundraising.
 

Cambridge Pixel is providing key technology to Lockheed Martin as part of a £44 million Royal Navy upgrade contract.

Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems UK has chosen the Cambridge business to supply software modules for radar scan conversion, target tracking and radar fusion.

The tech will be integrated into Lockheed Martin’s new state-of-the-art Naval Vigilance Radar system.

The system, along with Kelvin Hughes solid-state SharpEye™ radar transceivers, will be fitted to more than 60 Royal Navy platforms over the next five years.

The new equipment is part of the Navigation Radar Programme (NRP), a £44m Royal Navy upgrade awarded to Lockheed Martin by the Ministry of Defence in January.

To assist Lockheed Martin during the development and test phase of the new navigation radar system, Cambridge Pixel is also supplying radar simulation and recording capabilities from its established SPx product family.

David Johnson, CEO of Cambridge Pixel, said: “We are delighted to be working alongside Lockheed Martin’s engineers on this major upgrade of the navigation radars on the UK Royal Navy’s fleet of ships.

“Our technology software modules fit well with Lockheed Martin’s vision of developing a navigation radar system that meets the Royal Navy’s needs now but that also has a clear route to adding extra functionality in the future.”
 

As Boris Johnson joins David Davis and Liam Fox in the most luxurious HMO in England, Sue Chadwick of Birketts looks at what changes might be in store in planning over the next few months.

1) Politics
Theresa May is a Prime Minister with plenty on her plate, but has placed housing right in its centre. Her speech in Birmingham on July 11 recognised the stress of mortgage worries and the need for new housebuilding and infrastructure projects.

But she also made it clear that the benefits of new housing “should be shared…with local people themselves.”

Two days later her first speech as Prime Minister once again noted the issue of mortgage worries and stressed that “The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours.”

There have been changes to government departments that may have planning implications.

Savid Javid is the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, with a past that includes voting against an explicit requirement for environmental permits for hydraulic fracturing.

Gavin Barwell is the new Planning Minister and has already stated that the Government is “still committed to building a million new homes – including investment in affordable and intermediate rent, as well as shared ownership.”

2) Legislation
While the post-Brexit political world continues to occupy centre stage, in the background civil servants are quietly bringing the Housing and Planning Act 2016 into effect. Regulations published recently bring numerous planning -related provisions into effect – some now, and some in October.
Many of them give the Secretary of State (and the Mayor of London) more scope for intervening in plan making including the power:-

• To prepare a local development scheme and direct that it is brought into effect;  
• To direct suspension of a plan examination process and/or require plans to be submitted direct to the Secretary of State;
• Extended powers of intervention where a local authority are ‘failing’ in the preparation, revision or adoption of a development plan document;
• A new power for the Secretary of State to invite the Mayor of London or a combined authority to prepare a development plan document on behalf of another authority.

You can call Sue Chadwick on +44 (0)1223 326615 | +44 (0)7875 208376 or email her at: sue-chadwick [at] birketts.co.uk