Major coup for city in bid to help cancer sufferers
MANCHESTER is to become home to a world-class ‘designer drug’ project aimed at developing personalised treatments for diseases such as cancer.
Global research and development firm Qiagen is to move its European operation to the Oxford Road corridor in a partnership with the NHS, council, universities and existing institutions such as the Christie – a move seen as a major coup by local leaders.
Manchester council is to provide funding of up to £21m towards the new ‘precision medicine’ hub.
Qiagen uses the latest biomedical research to develop drugs based on people’s specific genetic make-up – known as ‘biomarkers’ – so that both prevention and live-saving cures can be tailored to individuals.
As well as research and development, it will look specifically at accelerating the creation of new treatments for use by the NHS and others.
Local patients will be the first to take part in clinical trials through the firm’s partnership with the Christie and other specialist health organisations in south Manchester.
It is understood local health, council and university chiefs have been in discussions for around a year about the move, which will create 250 jobs and could generate 1,000 more over the next decade.
Qiagen will join an existing cluster of biomedical institutions, including Manchester university’s life sciences department, on the Oxford Road corridor, as well as major worldclass organisations such as the Christie and the Paterson cancer research institute further south.
The money will come from a mixture of borrowing and the expected increase in business rates along the Oxford Road corridor.
Manchester University Hospital Trust, in a joint venture with Manchester Science Partnerships, will start building a second Citylabs development that will form the centrepiece around which the new campus will form.
Sir Mike Deegan, chief executive at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, said “Securing and expanding QIAGEN’s future on the Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust site is a pivotal component of our vision to create an internationally-leading research and innovation campus, leading to better care for our patients.
“Modern healthcare requires us to handle massive arrays of data from a huge range of technologies in order to come up with the right answer for patients. This has never been clearer than with genomic medicine, QIAGEN’s immediate focus, which holds the power to deliver transformative clinical benefits at the level of individual patients – the heart of precision medicine.”