Biotech Counts in Cambridge

After working as a research fellow for nearly seven years at the University of California, San Francisco, Alex Duncan wanted to settle down and raise a family. Rather than stay in the United States, he decided to put down roots in Cambridge, England. The decision wasn't difficult, since both he and his wife were from the United Kingdom, and he had done graduate work at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. "Cambridge is a vibrant university town with a

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"Cambridge is a vibrant university town with an academic atmosphere that's very collegial," says Duncan, vice president for drug discovery at Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT), a spin-off company founded 12 years ago using MRC research. "It's a beautiful place to live with lots of bright, interesting people around--not just scientists, but people in economics, business, history, and the arts. The area is just booming."

Bursting at the seams might be a more apt description. Cambridge is a biotechnology powerhouse where centuries of academic excellence--dating from before Sir Isaac Newton--come face to face with the largest and fastest growing concentration of life sciences companies and research institutions in Britain. "Cambridge has a creative, inventive environment, especially in the biosciences, because of its extremely strong academic background," says Tony Talbot, chief executive of Iceni BioDiscovery, a 13-person start-up company developing cell transplantation therapies for diabetes and other diseases. "It attracts very high-quality, ...

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