Drug discovery firm Redx Pharma is to establish new headquarters at Alderley Park, Cheshire.
The move will see the company create a 74,000ft2 (approximately 7,000m2) state-of-the-art drug development facility that brings together its three subsidiary businesses onto one site.
The company has reached an agreement with Manchester Science Partnerships that will see Alderley Park become the new home for Redx Oncology, a developer of anti-cancer drugs currently based within the Royal Liverpool Hospital’s Duncan Building, which is due to be demolished in 2017.
The Redx group already has two other subsidiaries, Redx Anti-Infectives and Redx Immunology based at Alderley Park in 37,000ft2 (3,500m2) of laboratory and office space.
Alderley Park, formerly home to ICI and recently vacated by AstraZeneca, which is building a new headquarters in Cambridge, is now an open-innovation community for life science businesses. Current developments will see the creation of up to 7,000 jobs there over the next decade.
Bringing our three teams together will support our ambitious growth plans
The Redx Pharma move will be completed by the end of the year and will see all 193 Redx staff operate on the same site for the first time, including the relocation of all 88 staff from Liverpool.
Neil Murray, Chief Executive of Redx Pharma, said: 'Bringing our three teams together will support our ambitious growth plans and give the business some valuable human, scientific and logistical synergies.
'Alderley Park’s high specification laboratories and superlative facilities present a commercially attractive solution as we seek to provide the best infrastructure and environment for our staff. The £30m capital investment that has been committed to the site over the next three years is impressive indeed. It will create one of the most important multi-occupier sites for life science in Europe.
Murray added: 'Alderley Park is also one of the key assets in the Northern Powerhouse proposals outlined by UK Chancellor George Osborne and, separately, by the leaders of Northern cities. They share a vision of the North of England as one city of 15 million people that, by working well together, can achieve more in terms of attracting talent, investment and competing in global markets.
'Pharma research and development is one of the areas they have identified as a pan-regional strength in the North.
'The site has a great history as a global leader in cancer research and we look forward to adding Redx drugs to the roll call of successful cancer therapies that ICI and AstraZeneca produced over the years.'