PUBLISHED: 18:08 31 August 2017 | UPDATED: 18:08 31 August 2017

Mia Jankowicz

The Gene and Cell Therapy Catapult is due to open in Autumn 2017. Picture: Daniel Buman

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The Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult is making its home at the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst campus in Gunnels Wood Road, and is due to open in autumn 2017.

Now an extra 12 million in government funds will go towards fitting out the buildings second floor.

The centre had already attracted 55 million of funding in 2014 from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (now the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy).

The extra funds will double the centres capacity and at full capacity it is predicted to bring 1.2 billion in revenue by 2020.

Chief executive officer Keith Thompson explained to the Comet that Stevenage was a good fit for the site, with the towns closeness to airports as well as the presence of other scientific expertise all big positives.

We went through a very rigorous search across the UK for our site, said Mr Thompson.

Theres a strong pedigree of pharmaceuticals around the area.

Stevenages workforce also stands to benefit, with the potential creation of around 180 support jobs.

The Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult has a mission to accelerate the UKs cell therapy industry and to make Stevenage an industry world leader.

Currently, one problem holding up cell research globally is the low availability of the large numbers of cells needed to perform large-scale clinical trials.

The 7,200-square-metre facility will allow UK businesses that are developing new cell therapy treatments to use its labs to manufacture cells for clinical trials at a large scale.

Cell and gene therapies are showing potential worldwide to combat numerous illnesses.

At the frontier of medical science, cell therapy is a technique which involves the injection of living cells into the human body in order to repair the direct causes of genetic diseases.

For example, the Cell & Gene Therapy Catapult played a large role in the creation of modified cells that are trained to recognise a certain protein in leukaemia cells, and then attack and destroy the cancerous cells.

To find out more visit http://www.ct.catapult.org.uk.

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Stevenage-based Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult gets 12 million ... - Comet 24

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