Redx Pharma finds new HQ in UK's Northern Powerhouse
Redx Pharma is basing its new headquarters at Alderley Park, Cheshire, creating a drug development facility that brings together its three subsidiary businesses onto one site
The company has reached an agreement with Manchester Science Partnerships, which will see Alderley Park become the new home for Redx Oncology. The business develops anti-cancer drugs and is currently based within the Royal Liverpool Hospital’s Duncan Building, which is due to be demolished in 2017.
The Redx group already has two other subsidiaries, Redx Anti-Infectives and Redx Immunology based at Alderley Park.
Alderley Park, the bioscience campus is home to a thriving open-innovation community for life science businesses. The current developments at the park will see the creation of up to 7,000 jobs over the next decade.
The Redx Pharma move will be completed by year-end and see all 193 Redx staff operate on the same site for the first time, with all 88 Liverpool-based job roles relocating.
Neil Murray, chief executive of Redx Pharma, commented: “Bringing our three teams together will support our ambitious growth plans and give the business some valuable human, scientific and logistical synergies.
“Alderley Park’s high specification laboratories and superlative facilities present a commercially attractive solution as we seek to provide the best infrastructure and environment for our staff. The £30 million capital investment that has been committed to the site over the next three years is impressive indeed. It will create one of the most important multi-occupier sites for life science in Europe.
“Alderley Park is also one of the key assets in the Northern Powerhouse proposals outlined by the Chancellor George Osborne and, separately, by the leaders of Northern cities. They share a vision of the North of England as one city of 15 million people that, by working well together, can achieve more in terms of attracting talent, investment and competing in global markets.
“Pharma research and development is one of the areas they have identified as a pan-regional strength in the North. The Redx core philosophy is all about breakthroughs and challenging received wisdoms and we are excited to be part of the collective spirit of discovery and enterprise being fostered at the new Alderley Park.
“The site has a great history as a global leader in cancer research and we look forward to adding Redx drugs to the roll call of successful cancer therapies that ICI and AstraZeneca produced over the years.”
Murray revealed that one of the company’s key projects is developing a new antibiotic designed to tackle MRSA, the bacterium that causes potentially lethal infections in humans. This is part of a commercial partnership with The Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals Trust.
“Our collaboration has the potential to create a drug that is a member of the first new class of antibiotics to emerge in a generation – critical in the global fight against antibiotic resistance,” says Murray.