UK Life Science Clusters and the benefits of an East London Super Cluster

UK Science Parks and Innovation Districts have long been pivotal engines of economic growth, driving technological innovation, economic development, and enhancing global competitiveness. In this blog, Dr. Grant Bourhill, MD at Barts Life Sciences and Board Director of the UK Science Park Association, explores the evolution of these clusters over the past few decades and the anticipated benefits of the highly collaborative Life Sciences ‘Super Cluster’ emerging in North-East London.

Note the views expressed herein are those solely of the author.

 What is the origin of Science Parks?

Science Parks began to emerge in the UK from the early 1970s, first by Cambridge University and Heriot-Watt, and they were quickly followed by other university-owned Parks, including Warwick and Surrey.

For academic institutions, these parks provided a route to commercialisation of research, provided employment opportunities for students and entrepreneurial academics, and importantly created a new revenue stream.

They also offered the opportunity for industry, large and small, to locate to a supportive environment, benefitting from proximity to universities as a source of academic and student talent. Today, the UK boasts over 130 Science Parks.

Several Science Parks have brought significant economic and civic benefits. They’ve created countless jobs, often becoming the main employment hub and key contributor to local growth, whilst breaking down the historical “town-and-gown” divide. In some cases, the impact has been truly transformational, for example that underpinning the “Cambridge Phenomenon” – the growth of high technology industry in a renowned university town. 

…and what about Innovation Districts?

Many Science Parks were initially created in rural or suburban environments, offering companies lower cost premises and their staff more affordable housing. However, as these Parks developed, transport and other infrastructure became challenging.

In addition, scaling companies often wanted to interact with a wider pool of industry and academic institutions than those immediately available on the doorstep. Attracting global talent to rural/suburban locations also proved difficult due to fewer amenities compared to urban areas.

Additionally, while some Parks had many industrial Tenants, the business value-add interaction between these companies was often lacking – in other words there was a “busy estate” but no “innovation community” that was greater than the sum of its parts.

In 2014, Julie Wagner and Bruce Katz noted the rise globally of urban “Innovation Districts.” It wasn’t just populations urbanising, so were science and innovation locations. 

What is the definition of an Innovation District?

Wagner and Katz characterised Innovation Districts as well-defined geographic areas with global brand recognition, offering high-quality transportation, housing, retail, and other amenities.

These districts included globally recognised entities from both the public and private sectors. They also provided a unifying common ambition across the locality, along with top-tier facilities and support for growing companies, such as access to finance, regulatory bodies, skills development, and talent supply.

Another key feature of many Innovation Districts is their shared governance model. Almost by definition, these districts function as ecosystems not led by any single institution but instead governed collaboratively across institutional boundaries, reflecting the diverse and dynamic makeup of entities in the area.

What about non-urban locations, can they still be successful, or do they risk becoming distressed assets?

For those non-urban locations with an inimitable advantage, the future looks bright. Places with specific sector strengths, such as Animal Health in Surrey, Food Science in Norfolk, and Cyber Technology in Cheltenham. There’s also an exciting and growing focus on Cell and Gene Therapy in Stevenage and cryogenics and compute specialisms in Daresbury.  Innovation locations adjacent to major hospitals may also benefit as more regular healthcare services move out from the hospital estate to free-up space for acute services.

However, some locations may struggle to compete, including more mature sites owned by universities whose basic business model and value proposition is now under pressure and who may lack the balance sheet strength to invest and upgrade facilities to modern, sustainable, standards. It is hard to generalise though – context really matters – and several of these locations may offer attractive investment and rejuvenation opportunity for real estate developers and investors, or alternatively offer compelling sites for manufacturing for example.

What has been the trend for Life Science Clusters?

Many developed countries are facing an ageing population, leading to increased demand for healthcare services, together with rising costs.

Urbanisation is also continuing at pace, further driving the demand for quality healthcare services. In North-East London for example, where Barts Life Sciences is located, our population will grow by about 15% in the next 15 years. This is equivalent to a city the size of Southampton relocating to the area.

More rapid technology deployment will be crucial in meeting these challenges.

We are entering the golden age for Life Sciences and broader healthcare innovations, with rapid progress being made across several technological areas, including therapeutics and biomarkers, diagnostics, robotics and automation, AI-assisted decision support, wearables, HealthTech devices, genomics, AR/VR, remote monitoring, in addition to a wide range of digital tools.

Further, private sector investment into Life Science Clusters has also grown substantially, especially since the Pandemic. For real-estate developers and investors, the attraction of higher-occupancy lab-based activities and Tenants offer income diversification and mitigates the contraction of the purely office-based sector.

The investment has simply accelerated the trend towards major urban Life Science Innovation Districts, for example across London, Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh.

What is Barts Life Sciences?

Barts Life Sciences is a partnership between Barts Health NHS Trust, the largest Trust in London, and Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), one of the most cited institutions for medical research globally.

Barts Health NHS Trust itself is the second largest Trust in the country, is home to three national biobanks, hosts separate research repositories containing over 500,000 human tissue samples, and has over 34,000 patients actively involved in research programmes. That means that Barts Health is consistently one of the top Trusts for commercial clinical trials
in the UK.

Queen Mary University of London is ranked 14^th in the world for research quality and is renowned for strengths in cancer, cardiovascular, genomics, inflammation, precision healthcare, population health, and big data science.  It was home to the 100,000 Genomes Project. Just recently, one of our Academic Clinicians was featured in the Times list of the top 100 global healthcare practitioners for 2024.

The focus of the BLS Partnership is rapid innovation translation into a healthcare setting, working with a growing range of industrial and academic collaborators.

How does BLS ensure impactful innovation in healthcare?

We work in a high-touch way with collaborators. For example, we have deliberately scaled our in-house technical capability in data science and HealthTech for collaborative translation projects.

We are also supporting the development of new assets for industry and academia to access. This includes our new Secure Data Environment, enabling access to over 2.5 million patient records, which launches later this year. It also includes our new Clinical Research Facility for Phase I-III trials, opening in 2025, which will be five times larger than our current facility.

As long-standing anchor institutions, Barts Health provides industry a route to market for new innovations, and Queen Mary University of London provides access to a wealth of talent, both from students and academic experts, supporting companies to grow and thrive. Our guiding ethos for collaboration is that we will focus on innovations that have the potential to make a substantial difference to our patients and healthcare staff.

We know that for growing companies the high-touch support and route to market are vital because it can be a relatively long journey from concept to deployment, and the more that we can work in partnership, the faster they can get their technology used in a healthcare environment, ultimately accelerating the benefit of our patients and healthcare staff.

What is the East London Life Sciences Super Cluster?

As mentioned, the area already has globally recognised public sector anchor institutions. We also have the world’s gene-pool on our doorstep with a diverse population of over 2.5 million people representing 97 nations. The scale and rich diversity of our population is a huge asset – meaning Life Science innovations in East London can be scaled globally with confidence.

The next step is to combine these benefits with world-class commercial facilities, which is what the Life Sciences “Super Cluster”, with major nodes at Whitechapel and Canary Wharf, will deliver.

Our ambition is to create one of the largest, most concentrated Life Science focussed Clusters in the country. Over 2.2 million square feet of facilities already exist, with a further 2 million square feet under construction or awaiting planning consent. Additionally, another 2.6 million square feet of life science buildings have outline planning consent.

…and why is it unique?

Whitechapel is a unique proposition as it sits immediately adjacent to the Royal London Hospital, one of the largest teaching hospitals in Europe and home to Barts Health’s new Clinical Research Facility.

Whitechapel is also home to QMUL’s campus centred around the Blizard Biomedical Research Building. With over 30% of the population already employed in healthcare, the area plans to expand further with 1.5 million square feet of predominantly commercial life sciences space, as well as retail, residential and community engagement spaces, with support from various private sector partners, including BGO & Lateral.

The area has a highly sought-after 40,000 square feet lab incubator managed by Queen Mary Bioenterprises, housing companies like AstraZeneca. To support scaling companies with access to talent, QMUL’s new Precision Healthcare Research Institute and Digital Environment Research Institute will also be integral parts of the cluster. Upon full development, Whitechapel will encompass approximately 4 million square feet, generating around 13,000 direct jobs with a gross value added (GVA) of £1.2 billion annually.

Canary Wharf, just five minutes away, already comprises over 20 million square feet of office, retail and residential space. It is home to significant entities like Genomics England, the MHRA, the UK Health Security Agency, the General Pharmaceutical Council, and growing companies such as AviadoBio. Canary Wharf Group and Kadans are now building a single 823,000 square feet “vertical campus” which is set to be the largest life sciences development in Europe. Plans also include outline consent for an additional 2.6 million square feet of life sciences buildings at North Quay, with flexibility to incorporate residential properties if needed.

Across both locations, companies will be adjacent to the globally-significant financial sectors in the City of London and Canary Wharf. The recently opened Elizabeth Line provides rapid transport linking these nodes and connecting them seamlessly with Heathrow Airport and the UK’s busiest train stations.

Put simply, the area will provide everything that Life Science companies need to succeed. Whether at Whitechapel or Canary Wharf, we offer industry partners a streamlined access to deep technical expertise and cutting-edge research and clinical capabilities together with a route to market into the largest Trust in London.

Is UK Life Sciences therefore in rude health?

Without a doubt, the UK’s strengths in scientific disciplines, genomics and cell and gene therapy, together with globally leading academic institutions and the NHS, are significant assets. The opportunity to leverage the unique data pool existing across the NHS is substantial and recent investments in the UK Biobank, as well as new manufacturing capacity, such as that by Moderna at Harwell, are very positive.

However, challenges persist. The time for industry to access Clinical Trials is now increasingly globally competitive. In addition, the ability for rapidly scaling technology companies to raise substantial investment finance is currently easier in US capital markets than in the UK, prompting some local companies to move their operations overseas. The recent Mansion House reforms, helping unlock investment into UK companies, are a step in the right direction.

Additionally, while the NHS offers a route to market for new innovations, its capacity to do so at scale, while at the same time dealing with existing pressures, is currently a challenge.

Overall, the UK Life Sciences Sector employs over a third of a million people across almost 7,000 organisations, contributing approximately £110 billion to the UK economy. This is a cause of celebration. Nevertheless, the Sector has for several years been running a trade deficit in an increasingly globally-competitive environment.

What might the likely trends be for Innovation Districts in the future?

One clear trend is the increasing emphasis on aggregation and collaboration across Districts. We are already seeing this
for example with the Ox-Cam Regional Partnership and the Imperial West Tech Corridor. In London, MedCity are playing
a central role in bringing Life Sciences Innovation Districts together to foster collaboration between Districts for the
benefit of all.

I believe there will be an ever-growing focus on sustainability, covering both the built environment and crucially the day-day operations of the District. Sustainability has a big role to play in Life Sciences and healthcare, with the NHS in England alone accounting for approximately 4% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Another important trend is towards inclusive innovation, in other words “with the community, for the community”. This means creating opportunities for local residents to actively participate in, and benefit from, the advancements and opportunities that are being created. Beyond being engines of economic growth, Innovation Districts should serve as engines of aspiration.

How is the East London Super Cluster delivering local benefits?

 In addition to improving local health outcomes, our Life Sciences “Super Cluster” is expected to create tens of thousands of jobs, spanning various fields, from scientific roles to business development, sales, marketing, operations, and more. The wide range of job opportunities means the Super Cluster can integrate a diverse cross-section of the local population, especially where skills and training facilities across the region create channels for entry.

Creating a “skills escalator” is what we are aiming for, boot-strapping aspiration across the Innovation District. However, this will require close collaborative working between various actors, which again lies at the heart of the philosophy and working practice of effective Innovation Districts.

For instance, we’ve partnered with Newham College to form a healthcare training hub, “Barts Health Futures”, providing residents training for healthcare careers. Already, almost 1,000 Londoners have been trained, and we are aiming to triple the number of facilities over the coming year.

I know we will have succeeded when local residents see the Super Cluster as a place where they work, rather than a place they walk past.

 How can life science companies engage with you?

We’re eager to engage industry and academic partners who share our commitment to improving health outcomes and reducing health inequalities.

For more information on how you can get involved with Barts Life Sciences, please visit our website, or contact us directly on info@bartslifesciences.org.

About the author

Grant has a wealth of experience in the innovation, real estate and research sectors. He is currently MD at Barts Life Sciences, focussed on driving innovation into healthcare supported by substantial new real estate in East London dedicated for Life Sciences.

He was previously CEO at Surrey Research Park and, prior to this, at Leicester Space Park, where he was responsible for the development of the new innovation cluster from concept to launch.

He has worked in both private and public sectors and has been involved in innovation across multiple areas, including clean energy, consumer electronics, space and defence.

He currently sits on the Board of the UK Science Park Association and holds an MBA from Oxford University.