If you want to understand how European biotech matured, you can do worse than follow Cambridge’s 60-year arc from a bold land bet in 1970 to a network of science and innovation campuses now reshaping the city’s fabric. This is a story of patient capital, university-college stewardship, and a constant re-tooling of space and transport to keep ideas and companies flowing. It also points toward what’s next: a denser, more connected cluster with new hubs in the south, especially the South Cambridge Science Centre qnd a repurposed city core.
1970s–1990s: The original template
The modern era begins in 1970 when Trinity College decided to develop the UK’s first science park on its land north of the city: Cambridge Science Park (CSP). The move, inspired by U.S. precedents, created the first European park of its kind and set the template that others would copy. Early tenants like Laser-Scan (1973) demonstrated how university research could commercialise in place.
A complementary piece arrived in 1987 with St John’s Innovation Centre (SJIC), Europe’s first innovation centre of its type. SJIC added hands-on incubation and entrepreneur services to the park model, tightening the spin-out pipeline and anchoring the “Cambridge Phenomenon” in real buildings and mentoring.
Meanwhile, in the south, Babraham evolved from an institute estate into a true research campus, co-locating early-stage companies alongside institute labs, an early “bench-to-business” blueprint that would prove powerful for biotech.
1990s–2010s: From parks to platforms
The 1990s saw genomics explode at Hinxton. The Wellcome Trust set up the Sanger Centre (now Wellcome Sanger Institute), which went on to sequence roughly a third of the first human genome, cementing Cambridge as a global genomics hub and showing how “big-science” institutes can seed entire sub-clusters. The Wellcome Genome Campus and EMBL-EBI became enduring attractors for talent, data infrastructure, and industry partnerships.
As the 2000s rolled in, the city’s south consolidated around healthcare and translational research. What is now the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) grew into Europe’s largest concentration of medical research and health science, co-locating hospitals, university institutes, charities, and critically industry. AstraZeneca’s decision in 2013 to move its global HQ and R&D to the campus, culminating in the Discovery Centre opening in 2021, crystallised the “clinic-adjacent R&D” model. The lesson: put discovery, patients, and manufacturing-minded R&D within walking distance and collaboration accelerates.
2010s–2020s: Congestion, scarcity and adaptive growth
Success brought stress. By the late 2010s, lab space scarcity and transport congestion became the binding constraints. Policy and planning responses have been iterative:
Transport: Cambridge South station (on the Biomedical Campus) is being delivered by Network Rail to better plug the south into London and, in time, East West Rail, a corridor that should connect Oxford–Milton Keynes–Cambridge into a single innovation labour market. Expect most services to prioritise sustainable access (not large car parks), with extensive cycle parking and multimodal integration. The strategic bet: reduce friction for commuters, collaborators, and patients while freeing land for science rather than parking.
Densification & reuse: The Grafton Centre, an under-performing 1980s mall, won approval in 2024 to convert large chunks into labs, a hotel and gym, pulling life sciences into the urban core and shortening commutes. It’s a bellwether for the UK: retrofit retail for R&D to relieve edge-of-city pressure.
Distributed hubs: Alongside the North (CSP/SJIC) and the South (CBC/Babraham), the region is adding new nodes to keep companies in-region as they scale. That’s where the South Cambridge Science Centre (SCSC) comes in.
The next decade: South Cambridge Science Centre and the multi-node cluster
SCSC is emerging at Sawston’s Dales Manor Estate, six miles south of the city centre, as a purpose-built life sciences campus designed to deliver modern, flexible, wet-lab and office space quickly. Phase 1 targets ~145,000 sq ft with parking for cycles and cars; Phase 2 which has planning consent adds ~45,000 sq ft. The scheme targets Net Zero Carbon operation with BREEAM “Excellent” and EPC “A”, reflecting investor and occupier demand for future-proofed assets close to the heart of Cambridge. Planning for subsequent phases is progressing, signalling a multi-building pipeline.
Why does SCSC matter when CBC and Babraham already exist nearby?
Through-cycle capacity: Cambridge has repeatedly lost promising teams to London or overseas due to lab shortages. Dedicated mid-tech and wet-lab buildings at SCSC provide relief valves that keep IP, teams, and investors local. Recent market commentary underscores that early-stage companies still struggle to find in-city wet labs. SCSC squarely targets that gap within easy reach of Cambridge city centre..
Cluster adjacency, not duplication: SCSC sits close enough to CBC and Babraham to enable collaboration (clinicians, cores, CROs), but with a planning envelope that can move faster than hospital-adjacent plots. That mix lets founders stage growth: incubate at Babraham, translate with clinicians at CBC, and scale in SCSC without changing schools or boards.
Sustainability and design standards: The energy and water demands of high-spec labs are now board-level issues. By baking in Net Zero and BREEAM “Excellent,” SCSC reduces long-run operating risk and aligns with occupier ESG requirements, a competitive edge over legacy stock.
Investor fit: Institutional investors increasingly prefer platform-style life-science assets they can scale in phases. SCSC’s phased pipeline and planning progress (including recent detailed consent for a 44,650 sq ft building) match that thesis.
South Cambridge Science Centre is arriving alongside other south-of-city projects (for example, the £400m Cambridge Discovery Campus proposal in South Cambridgeshire) that indicate continued private capital appetite for lab-enabled real estate. Expect a more polycentric map by 2030: CBC + Babraham + SCSC (south), CSP/SJIC + Cambridge North (north), and a repurposed Grafton Centre in the core, each with a slightly different mix of tenants and translational links.
What worked in Cambridge and what to copy
1) Patient, mission-aligned landowners. Trinity and St John’s acted like stewards, not flippers, recycling returns into better amenities and services. That stability gave founders predictable rents and room to grow. Babraham did the same by co-developing its campus to support very early-stage companies on site.
2) Institute gravity. The Genome Campus shows how a world-class institute can anchor a sub-cluster for decades; the Biomedical Campus proves that proximity to hospitals multiplies the value of industry R&D. Put star researchers, patients, and data platforms together and you get flywheels.
3) Transport as an R&D enabler. The new Cambridge South station and the promise of East West Rail are not vanity projects; they’re labour-market infrastructure. In practical terms, shaving 20–40 minutes off a commute can unlock entirely new hiring radii and collaboration patterns across Oxford–Cambridge.
4) Adaptive reuse and infill. The pivot to convert retail (Grafton Centre) and densify around stations is the pragmatic answer to green-belt constraints and climate goals. That’s how you expand capacity without sprawl.
5) Laddered space. Cambridge works when it offers a ladder: incubators (SJIC, Babraham), grow-on labs (CSP, SCSC), and corporate-scale R&D (CBC). Break any rung and companies leak out of the region.
2030: What a healthy Cambridge looks like
By 2030, the winning version of Cambridge is a network:
North continues specialising in deep tech/AI-enabled biotech around CSP and SJIC, with better last-mile links into the city and the Genome Campus via rail and shared shuttle models.
Core features a mixed-use Grafton precinct where wet-lab buildings sit above active ground floors, turning “lab” into civic life rather than a closed campus.
South runs the full translational stack: discovery at university institutes, trials and care at hospitals, scaling laboratories and office space at SCSC and neighbouring sites, all stitched together by Cambridge South station and cross-country services as East West Rail phases in.
For founders, that means you can form, fund, test, manufacture, and partner without uprooting. For investors, it means a steady funnel from seed to growth without relocation risk.
Final thought: Don’t romanticise the 1970 playbook—update it
The romance of “the first science park” is deserved, but the 2030 playbook is different. Cambridge now competes globally for talent and capital. Its advantages hinge on speed, connectivity, and sustainability as much as on brand. The South Cambridge Science Centre is a key signal of how the region is adapting: build flexible, high-spec, low-carbon labs where companies want to be; couple them to hospitals and transport; and keep the rungs of the scale-up ladder intact. That’s the lesson from 1970 to now and the route to remain Europe’s most productive biotech city through 2030.