Ingenza Ltd. based at the Roslin BioCentre has today celebrated the opening of a new tissue culture laboratory. The state-of-the-art clean room will expand the company’s capabilities to construct efficient cell lines to produce human therapeutics and is complimentary to Ingenza’s microbial strain construction expertise.
Ingenza’s staff has doubled in size every two years to date since the business began in 2003, as the company has applied its suite of biosciences enabling technologies to new sectors of UK industry. Ingenza is now primarily focussed in the strategic areas of biologics development and manufacture and the application of synthetic biology for sustainable bioprocessing. The company’s customer base extends through Europe and North America in the areas of pharma, chemicals, food, feed and renewable fuels. The new laboratory will create 4 new jobs within the first year and potentially 35 additional jobs within 3 years, augmenting the 25 current members of staff.
President of Ingenza, Dr. Ian Fotheringham explains, “Today illustrates Ingenza’s potential to provide commercial and manufacturing support for Scotland’s state-of-the-art research in life sciences.”
Rhona Allison, Life Sciences Director at Scottish Enterprise, officially opened the new suite and said: “The opening of this impressive new laboratory marks an important milestone in the development of Ingenza’s business in Scotland. The company has continued to go from strength to strength since moving to Roslin Biocentre and is a great example of Scotland’s thriving life sciences sector. We look forward to continuing to work closely with the company to support its ambitious expansion plans.”
Ingenza were also joined by local Cllr Russell Imrie, who explained “Ingenza’s involvement in a wide range of sectors, and its achievements as a synthetic biology SME are indicative of the growth of the science sector in Midlothian as part of a strong and diversified local economy of national and international importance. Midlothian Council recognises this in the development of the Midlothian Economic Development Framework, and the Life Sciences, Animal Biosciences, and Earth Sciences sector action plans.”