GammaDelta Therapeutics to move to London’s White City life sciences cluster

Stanhope, Mitsui Fudosan and AIMCo have announced that GammaDelta Therapeutics Ltd is to become the latest life sciences company to take space at White City Place, the 1.9 million square foot business, innovation and life sciences district in West London alongside Imperial College’s White City Campus. White City Place is fast becoming the centre of the emerging life science cluster in West London, with pharmaceutical giant Novartis recently announcing that they are moving their UK headquarters to the site.

GammaDelta will join fellow innovators Autolus and Synthace in White City Place and OpenCell, Rebelbio and Blenheim Chalcot will be their neighbours in the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham. White City Place encourages collaboration between its life sciences tenants and amongst the wider life science community, reinforced by the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham’s Industrial Strategy.

Moving from the London BioScience Innovation Centre near St Pancras, GammaDelta will be taking approximately 12,000 square feet of office and lab space in the WestWorks building, which it will use as its base to develop immunotherapies for cancer and other serious immune-related diseases. GammaDelta also has a research facility within the Incubator at the Translation and Innovation Hub at Imperial College London, where rapid progress has enabled expansion of the company’s operations leading to its new footprint at White City Place. Founded in 2016 by transatlantic bioscience investment firm Abingworth, based on pioneering research conducted at King’s College London and The Francis Crick Institute into gamma delta T cells, GammaDelta is developing improved immunotherapies for a range of malignant diseases.

The announcement of GammaDelta’s relocation follows last year’s news that Japanese pharmaceutical company Takeda Pharmaceutical Company, Ltd and Abingworth committed to investing $100 million into GammaDelta’s research and development funding. This will help accelerate GammaDelta’s growth and progress in the field of life sciences.

White City’s status as an emerging cluster for technology and innovation was confirmed by the NLA Knowledge Capital Report, which highlighted the positive effect that Imperial College’s White City Campus, with its new Molecular Sciences Research Hub, has had on scientific innovation and the pioneering ethos of the area. It described White City as ‘one of the main life science and tech districts,’ praising the interplay between its scientific research and its forward-looking companies.

Other tenants at White City Place include the Yoox Net-a-Porter technology centre and the pioneering tech ‘scale-ups’ Attention Seekers and Arts Alliance Media. The site boasts onsite fitness complexes Studio Lagree and F45 Fitness, alongside a host of modern restaurants, bars and cafés, including Feast, Coco Di Mama and Waka. The WestWorks building is also home to ‘The Studio’, a state of the art 100-seater broadcasting/hosting space equipped with the latest technology in audio and visual recording.

Knight Frank and Cushman & Wakefield acted for Stanhope. GammaDelta were represented by Colliers International Life Sciences.

David Camp, Chief Executive, Stanhope:

“GammaDelta is an exciting and innovative life sciences company and we are delighted that they are the latest addition to our thriving centre of technology and innovation in WestWorks. They join a list of names such as Novartis, Autolus and Synthace, which all contribute to the fast-paced and forward-thinking ethos of White City Place.”

Elichiro Onozawa, Managing Director, Mitsui Fudosan:

“The arrival of GammaDelta to WestWorks highlights once again the transformation of the area into a hub of scientific and technological innovation. With the renovation of White City Place and the development of Imperial College’s new campus, White City has asserted itself as the destination of choice for any life sciences company looking to bring their exciting ideas and new approaches to London.”