The new Edinburgh BioQuarter represents an innovative and exciting opportunity for Scotland's life sciences sector, particularly with government funding helping to consolidate its position at the cutting edge of research.
The £600 million industrial centre is a unique enterprise in the UK, combining academic, clinical and commercial facilities to create a culture of innovation in Scotland's capital, and inspiring continuing research into numerous areas of the life sciences field - from drug development to translational medicine research.
Companies that choose to relocate to the Edinburgh BioQuarter can benefit from its world-class infrastructure, including in-house biomedical research and development facilities. That's not to mention the expertise of more than 1,200 qualified life science researchers in the local community, helping to establish Edinburgh as one of the world's top 10 investment centres for biomedical sciences.
Collaborations between pharmaceutical companies, government bodies and universities have already achieved great success for areas such as translational medicine research. The Translational Medicine Research Collaboration was established in the Edinburgh BioQuarter to improve understanding of a diverse range of diseases that could carry wide-reaching health benefits throughout the world, in areas such as oncology, metabolism and virology.
The BioQuarter has also been pivotal to Scotland becoming a leader in areas such as stem cell research, building on the nation's existing reputation in regenerative medicine to become Europe's largest dedicated community for stem cell sciences. This means that any company eager to pursue research in this field can benefit from some of the world's foremost facilities located just a short distance from each other around the Edinburgh area for the utmost convenience and communication between departments.
It's not just the standard of research that makes the Edinburgh BioQuarter so appealing to investors, but also the on-premise specialist manufacturing facilities that mean companies can be fully in control of their products and will no longer have to outsource their manufacturing. Centres such as the Biocampus, located just eight miles from Edinburgh city centre, have already established themselves as major sites for the manufacturing of next generation biotechnology - predicted to be an increasingly significant area of research and development in the coming years.
Continuing investment in the Edinburgh BioQuarter by interested parties and the government's Strategic Investment Fund is expected to attract ever more businesses to Edinburgh and help to establish the city as a leading centre of excellence in the life sciences, as well as creating more valuable jobs in the sector each year.
Andrew Regan writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.
