US healthcare company Johnson & Johnson will expand its presence across the UK in 2014, creating a network of new partnering offices at UK life science clusters. Johnson & Johnson currently operates its early stage innovation from its London Innovation centre. The centres focus on identifying early-stage innovation at academic institutions, start-up biotech companies and venture capital firms
whilst London will remain the main hub, the new networking offices will target science ‘hotspot’ across the UK.
Cambridge’s Biomedical Babraham Research Campus is one of the chosen bases and is a move which will create around 2,000 jobs for the wider Cambridge area
The other offices will be at the University of Manchester Innovation Centre, Life Sciences Hub Wales, Edinburgh BioQuarter and the University of Oxford.
Patrick Verheyen, head of the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Centre, London, said : “Establishing these partnering offices reflects our commitment to collaborative innovation and our belief that being close to the source of innovation drives our ability to create strong networks of people who can combine ideas, resources and technologies in a new way to tackle urgent unmet medical needs” .