University seeks to drive biomedical innovation at first UK life sciences opportunities zone
Together with the site owners, Charnwood Campus, and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership, the University of Leicester is seeking to establish a new Innovation Centre at the UK’s first ever Life Sciences Opportunity Zone in Charnwood, near Loughborough to accelerate business growth for the Med-Tech and Biopharma community.
The envisaged Innovation Centre would foster collaboration between businesses and academics to develop diagnostics and therapeutic interventions for our ethnically diverse population. This will build on local and regional strengths in precision medicine and clinical trials as well as in Drug development, trauma rehabilitation, assisted living and wearable technologies. The Centre would create a “safe space” for new business spin outs and start ups and provide space for a training hub on the site to support the interchange between business and research and catalyse knowledge transfer activities.
Global companies 3M and Almac and Medilink EM are committed to offering opportunities to SMEs for additional training and mentoring to aid in their growth process.
The Innovation Centre is planned to be established in one of the existing high-quality laboratory buildings with co-located office space to create small scale, flexible space perfect for business start-up and growth.