Work begins on new bioscience facility in Cambridgeshire

Published: 15-Jun-2012

Support by a £75m grant from the UK government

Ground has been broken at a new bioscience facility in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire, UK, opening a new chapter for bioinformatics in the area.

Work has officially begun on a new bioinformatics Technical Hub, part-funded by the UK’s Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The development is supported by a £75m grant from the UK government for the expansion of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and its role in coordinating Elixir, the nascent research infrastructure for life science data.

Launched in November 2007, the Elixir project is funded by the European Commission. There are 32 participating organisations from 14 countries (plus EMBL).

The new build represents a growing awareness of the potential benefits to society that bioinformatics (the application of computer science to biology) can bring, including improvements to health.

As well as the BBSRC, the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Wellcome Trust have supported the build.

The funding provides infrastructure to secure the sustainability and continuity of EMBL-EBI services as the core European repository for all major molecular biology data to industry and academia.

It will also help to retain pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry research capability, as well as consolidating the UK's leading position in bioscience research at the centre of European research infrastructure.

In a speech at the ground-breaking to start the development work, Alf Game, acting BBSRC research director, said: ‘As we move towards a greater understanding of biology at the systems level, access to many different types of large biological data sets is crucial. Together with the associated availability of bioinformatics services, this information has become invaluable for research discoveries and their translation out of the lab and into industrial or clinical settings.’

The new three-storey Technical Hub will feature a training centre, office space for approximately 200 EMBL-EBI and Elixir employees, and an industry led clinical translation suite for bioinformatics.

You may also like