Facilities, services and expertise
Birmingham Research Park, managed by Enterprise, provides office and laboratory space and incubation services to pre-revenue companies. It includes the Unit 9 Med-Tech Incubator, opened in 2022, and the BioHub Birmingham®, a fully-serviced biomedical incubator, that supports research-led businesses as they test products and services.
The Research Park is part of a thriving regional innovation ecosystem in the West Midlands, with tenants benefiting from the wide networks, support, and facilities found only in research intensive universities. Enterprise continues to deepen ties between the Research Park, University campus, and partners across the region.
A community of research-led companies
Birmingham Research Park has a stable occupancy of over 90% capacity with tenants reporting strong growth in the past year. Nonacus, a cancer genetic testing company, graduated from the BioHub to its own headquarters in 2023, due to commercial growth and after scaling to over 50 employees.
Also, at the BioHub, Matoke Holdings, a medical device R&D company developing products including antimicrobial wound dressings, has taken on more space and recruited at a management level as it drives its technology closer to clinical translation. MicrobesNG, a specialist microbial genome sequencing company, and Orbsen Therapeutics, a regenerative medicine group, are among the other BioHub tenants experiencing strong growth.
Unit 9 was meanwhile awarded with a prestigious ‘Best Place-based Knowledge Exchange (KE) Initiative’ prize from PraxisAuril, the UK’s professional association for KE, in 2023. The incubator has welcomed its seventh tenant, Birmingham Biotech, which has developed an antiviral nasal spray. Fallouh Healthcare, a Cardiothoracic surgery med-tech group, secured Innovate UK funding and took on additional office space within the Research Park. Another Unit 9 tenant, Quest Meat, is stepping up work on its cultivated meat technology after being backed by more than £520,000 of investment.
We have an innovation ecosystem that’s capable of taking ideas from conception to clinical adoption. The Research Park gives companies access to instrumentation and facilities, so they don’t need to make big capital investments. But the feedback we receive is that it’s the location, and proximity to other like-minded co-founders, that is the real game changer for our companies.
Birmingham Research Park is attracting growing interest from VCs, developers and investors as the UK health-tech sector draws international attention. Enterprise is repurposing space at the Park to improve its facilities and support future growth. In coming months, some BioHub tenants will migrate to a new Precision Health Technology Accelerator, opening at the Birmingham Health Innovation Campus (BHIC), releasing incubation space for new companies.
