Monday 19th September 2016, 9:00am
While human health is a considerable focus for many of the people working in life sciences, the industry in Scotland also includes a wide breadth and depth of subjects, including animal health, aquaculture and plant health.
Drop the phrase ‘life sciences’ into conversation and people will immediately begin to imagine medical researchers wearing long white coats, wandering around laboratories and discovering medicines to tackle diseases. Yet the life sciences industry in Scotland is much broader than simply human health.
From tackling pests in order to protect the crops growing in the fields and the fish being farmed in the seas all the way through to improving the health of the livestock being reared for the food chain, the scientists working in Scotland’s businesses and universities are squaring-up to some of the most pressing issues facing the world today.
As well as making globally-important medical discoveries, Scotland also has a rich history of pushing forward advances in the fields of animal and plant research, including the development of new varieties of potatoes and soft fruits better suited to cope with our changing climate, and the creation of Dolly the Sheep, the world’s first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell, which was born 20 years ago. [1996]
When it comes to animal health, few sites can rival the University of Edinburgh’s Easter Bush Campus in Midlothian, on the southern edge of Edinburgh.
The Campus is home to the world-famous Roslin Institute, the birthplace of Dolly the Sheep, and to the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, along with hospitals for animals of all shapes and sizes.
“The Easter Bush Campus is already a centre of excellence with the largest concentration of animal science-related expertise anywhere in Europe, but we want to take that a stage further and become a world leader by 2025.”
John Mackenzie, chief executive of Roslin BioCentre and the new Roslin Innovation Centre, due to open in the summer of 2017.The current Roslin BioCentre offers traditional incubation space for life science businesses, while the new innovation centre will offer something a little bit different. The three-storey building will include 41,000sq ft of flexible laboratory and office space that companies can rent on a 12-month ‘easy in, easy out’ or longer-term basis, along with facilities that will be shared with other users on the campus, including a gym, a shop and a science outreach centre for visiting schools and other public engagement events.
“The Innovation Centre will allow businesses to better collaborate with the staff and students on the site and to tap into their expertise. The open lab and office space will allow them to work together – or to work more privately in partitioned areas if required – while the recreation facilities mean people will also be able to have more of those unplanned moments or ‘random collisions’ where they can just talk about the weather or discuss their work.”
John Mackenzie, chief executive of Roslin BioCentre and Roslin Innovation CentreA ‘pop-up’ incubator has opened in the nearby Sir Alexander Robertson Building and companies already using the pop-up include: Greengage Lighting, which supplies agricultural lighting, sensors and control systems and which relocated to Easter Bush from London; Kajeka, a spin-out from The Roslin Institute that provides visual software for big data and network analysis; and Roslin Technologies, a company launched by the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh-based private equity advisor JB Equity to commercialise research from The Roslin Institute and the Royal Dick Vet School. JB Equity is currently raising a £15 million fund to support commercialisation.
“We’ve already had strong interest from a whole range of companies, from multinationals through to spin-outs and start-ups. In the medium- to long-term, we aim to have between 15 and 30 tenants using the Roslin Innovation Centre as their new business location of choice for companies undertaking strategic, commercial and collaborative research in the animal and veterinary sciences, agri-tech and ‘one health’ industries.”
John Mackenzie, chief executive of Roslin BioCentre and Roslin Innovation CentreSource: Business Quarter
Roslin Innovation Centre
The University of Edinburgh
Easter Bush Campus
Midlothian EH25 9RG
