AstraZeneca’s Discovery Centre, Cambridge
New pharmaceutical R&D facility designed to foster collaboration across world-class science ecosystem
The pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca’s new Discovery Centre is a state-of-the-art research and development (R&D) facility based in Cambridge that has been designed to the world’s highest environmental standards and accommodates over 2,200 research scientists. The new £1billion facility includes the most advanced robotics, high-throughput screening and AI-driven technology. It will support AstraZeneca’s focus on specialised and precision medicines and foster the discovery and development of next generation therapeutics, including nucleotide-based, gene-editing and cell therapies.
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The Company invests more than £5 billion in R&D globally each year, a large part of which takes place in the UK. The Centre will help further nurture partnerships, develop the next generation of science leaders and accelerate AstraZeneca’s industry-leading levels of productivity.
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Located within the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the physical proximity of the building’s 19,000m2 laboratories to leading hospitals, the University of Cambridge, other research institutions and a number of biotech companies will promote a culture of open partnership and innovation in its inviting open spaces.
The Company has over 200 active collaborations in the region and more than 2,000 around the world across academia, biotech and industry. The company employs 80,000 people globally of which 13,000 work exclusively in R&D.​
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Building services contractors Skanska of Woking were appointed as the company to provide the mechanical and electrical installation.
The project team at Skanska approached Dale Melton for selections/specification connected with the natural gas fired heating boilers required for the project.
Approximately 10MW of heat energy was required and be split over a number of LTHW boilers to operate in cascade. The boilers should be very high in efficiency, extremely low in NOx emissions and be capable of operating within a low temperature differential to cater for the needs of the designed heating system.​ ​
Eleven Elco Trigon XXL boilers were selected for the project with gross seasonal efficiency of up to 96% and NOx emission as low as 20mg/kWh. The operational temperature difference was anywhere between 10°C and 30°C making them ideally suited to the requirements of the project.​
The new Centre raises the bar for sustainable R&D and global collaboration across the pharmaceutical industry. It will allow the breaking of new boundaries in the understanding of disease biology, bring life-changing medicines to patients and power the next stage of AstraZeneca’s growth.