MedImmune expands r&d capacity with new UK research facility

Biotech company MedImmune has opened a new biologics r&d facility in Cambridge, UK.

Named after the 1982 Nobel Prize Winner for Chemistry, the Aaron Klug Building is a 92,000ft² facility containing state-of-the-art laboratories. The facility provides MedImmune with capacity to significantly increase the number of candidate drugs that it can develop each year.

The expansion forms a key part of the company's growth strategy. Following its acquisition by AstraZeneca in June 2007, MedImmune was consolidated with the former Cambridge Antibody Technology business, along with other areas of biological research being conducted elsewhere within AstraZeneca. Now as AstraZeneca's global biologics unit, the aim is to deliver an average of one new biologic product per year from 2013.

"We want to maximise our potential to develop new and better medicines, so adequate space and resource for r&d is a real priority for us," said Jane Osbourn, site leader and vice president of research, Cambridge."The Aaron Klug Building is critical to allowing us to fulfil this role and to achieve our goal of significantly increasing our drug development capabilities."