Samsara takes new lab space at The Oxford Trust’s Wood Centre for Innovation

Published by

Nicky Godding

Biotech start-up, Samsara Therapeutics, is taking new laboratory space at The Oxford Trust’s Wood Centre for Innovation. The Trust, a local charity encouraging the pursuit of science and enterprise, is developing life science laboratories at its Wood Centre for Innovation to increase capacity for the local ecosystem.

The £0.5m development will deliver laboratory facilities to answer the significant demand that has been seen in the last year from science and tech start-ups and SMEs for lab space in Oxford’s Global Health and Life Sciences District, one of the UK’s leading technology clusters delivering lifesaving developments such as the COVID-19 vaccine. The Trust has received £0.1 million in funding towards the project via the Government’s Local Growth Fund, secured by the Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership (OxLEP).

Samsara Therapeutics is an early-stage drug discovery company that is discovering new therapies for extending healthy ageing and treating ageing-related and genetic diseases – including neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s, metabolic syndrome and numerous rare genetic disorders. They do this by identifying molecules that induce the cellular process of autophagy, which decreases as we age and is dysfunctional in many diseases.

Samsara was founded in 2018 and has operations in Oxford and Boston, with important collaborations in Paris and Graz Austria. They are backed by Apollo Ventures, a company builder and investor in longevity.

Peter Hamley, chief scientific officer, Samsara Therapeutics, said: “We're really excited to move to the Wood Centre for Innovation. It's perfect for the needs of a growing biotech, with state-of-the art facilities in a great location and it allows us to expand the team over the coming months.”

The laboratory development is being carried out by specialist project managers Bulb Laboratories, based in Reading. The project will total 3,300 sq ft of advanced R&D laboratory space for work at containment level 2 with climate control and air handling and 500 sq ft of shared facilities for common equipment and specialist microscopy use, including liquid nitrogen storage, autoclave, water purifier and dark room.

The Trust’s innovation centres – the Wood Centre for Innovation and the Oxford Centre for Innovation in the city centre – are managed by Oxford Innovation, a spin-out from The Oxford Trust and the UK’s leading operator of innovation centres.

The first phase of the works is planned to complete in the spring. If the lab developments are successful, the Trust will then actively look to add further laboratory space at the Wood Centre for Innovation.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.