The wave of pioneering bio-tech firms moving to White City’s booming tech district continues.
GammaDelta Therapeutics will leave its current offices in King’s Cross and set up its new HQ in the WestWorks building in Wood Lane.
The emerging bio-tech outfit recently secured $100m of investment from Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company Takeda and Abingworth to help develop new ground-breaking treatments for cancer and other serious diseases.
It will join the sprawling cluster of major life sciences firms which have made White City the UK’s new capital of life sciences innovation.
“GammaDelta’s decision to move to the borough further illustrates why our thriving tech district is a prime destination for bio-tech firms,” said Cllr Andrew Jones, H&F Cabinet Member for the Economy and the Arts.
“We’re creating one of the leading tech hubs in Europe right here in White City as we future proof our local economy for the 21st century.”
White City’s flourishing tech hotbed is a result of the council’s Industrial Strategy (pdf) in partnership with Imperial College London to make the borough a leading destination for the biotech, digital and creative industries.
“We want all residents to share in the prosperity of a booming H&F,” added Cllr Jones. “Our Industrial Strategy is designed to harness the opportunities unlocked by the growth and development we’re seeing across the borough.”
New neighbours
GammaDelta will take 12,000 sqft of office and lab space at the WestWorks building. The offices are part of the White City Place development that was formerly the BBC Media Village.
It will join an ever-expanding list of science innovators moving to White City which includes one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies Novartis.
The Swiss drugs giant will move around 600 employees from its current offices in Surrey to the WestWorks building.
Other notable arrivals include the $534million-valued Autolus, one of London’s most affordable bio-tech hubs, Open Cell, and Synthace, which recently secured $25.6million in funding to go towards its leading cloud software platform for automating and improving the success rate of biological research and development.
“The arrival of GammaDelta to WestWorks highlights once again the transformation of the area into a hub of scientific and technological innovation,” said Elichiro Onozawa, Managing Director of Mitsui Fudosan, one of the companies behind the WestWorks development.
“With the renovation of White City Place and the development of Imperial College’s new campus, White City has asserted itself as the destination of choice for any life sciences company looking to bring their exciting ideas and new approaches to London.”
In the beginning
GammaDelta was founded in 2016 by transatlantic bioscience investment firm Abingworth.
Its pioneering research into gamma delta T cells was led by Professor Adrian Hayday and Dr Oliver Nussbaumer at King’s College London and the Francis Crick Institute, funded in part by Cancer Research UK.
The UK firm already has a research facility within the Incubator at Imperial’s Translation and Innovation Hub in Wood Lane.
Flying high
Meanwhile, aviation giant Airbus also now has an office for its defence and space team in the I-Hub building.
The global aerospace company – which is currently designing an electric-powered passenger jet – has joined other businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs alongside Imperial’s extensive network of researchers, academics and other corporate partners.
Other businesses based at the I-Hub include Polymateria, a pioneering materials company, that has developed a fully biodegradable plastic as they help tackle the global crisis of plastic pollution; Medisieve, the developer of a ground-breaking drug-free malaria treatment and OGCI Climate Investments, a one billion dollar start-up which is developing technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the Central Working co-working space.
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