Release date: 11th March, 2009

Royal Approval for Chesterford Research Park

HRH The Duke of York tours tenant companies and leads R&D CEO’s in lunch discussion


His Royal Highness the Duke of York visited Chesterford Research Park today to tour the site and meet with senior management from R&D companies based at the Park.

The tour included a visit to BioFocus DPI, the service division of Galapagos, which offers a full suite of target-to-drug discovery products and services. During his visit HRH was shown the Ion Channel room in which approx £1million has been invested in new equipment which attracts clients from all over the world and also had the opportunity to speak to scientists currently working in the labs.

Dr Chris Newton, Senior Vice President BioFocus DPI said of the visit: “We are very grateful that His Royal Highness visited today. It is extremely motivating to the staff of BioFocus DPI that he came in his role as the UK's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment and that he’s taken an interest in the Biotechnology sector, in which we are striving to be one of the world’s leading research companies

.”Driving around the rest of the Park His Royal Highness was able to see first-hand the sympathetic development of the Park to date which includes the regeneration of original buildings as well as the development of new purpose built laboratory and research space.  The oldest building on the Park, the Mansion House now home to nine smaller R&D and other specialist companies contrasting with the newly built Gonville Laboratory which will provide a new European headquarters within 41,500 sq ft of laboratory space, for US based Illumina Inc, one of the world’s leading developers, manufacturers and marketers of next generation life-science tools and integrated systems. 

His Royal Highness then spent time with other tenant companies bought together to showcase the breadth of R&D expertise on the Park.  Contributions from Biotica, Isogenica, Illumina and Pfizer gave His Royal Highness an overview of their latest developments and technologies, whilst the variety of companies itself confirmed the   appeal of Chesterford Research Park to biotech and big pharma alike

.A gathering of senior management drawn from Park tenant companies joined His Royal Highness for an informative and thought-provoking discussion over lunch, the main focus being the marked disparity between access to VC funding in the UK versus the US and the issue of effectively managing the commercialisation of research coming out of academia.

Finally His Royal Highness unveiled a plaque to commemorate his visit, pausing to talk to the crowd that had gathered before taking his leave.

Hosting the visit, Martin Sylvester, Director Churchmanor Estates Plc, joint developers with Aviva Investors said: “It has been a great pleasure to welcome His Royal Highness to our research park this afternoon and to have the opportunity to showcase the innovative and ground-breaking work that is being carried out here every day”