The UK’s ‘Golden Triangle’ of London, Cambridge and Oxford has been ranked third in Savills’ index of the world’s top 30 life science hubs.
Boston and San Francisco were ranked first and second with New York/New Jersey (fourth) and San Diego (fifth) making up the rest of the top five global locations.
Elsewhere in the UK, Manchester ranked 25th in the index. Savills also highlighted Edinburgh and Glasgow in Scotland as emerging hotspots which – while outside the main index – have the potential to grow.
To create the index the company examined locations based on the depth of their life science talent pools (including cost of talent), R&D investment and output, fundraising levels, business environment, cost of living and lifestyle factors, and property affordability.
Tom Mellows, head of UK science at Savills, said: “The Golden Triangle has taken some big strides forward this year and further consolidated its position as the UK’s centre of life science activity. It is also, according to our Index, the leading location in Europe for the industry. As we look towards the start of 2025 we’re expecting further investment and take-up from a range of occupiers from SMEs to larger corporates, as well as the re-activation of some larger requirements that were paused 12-24 months ago.”
Rick Schuham, CEO of global occupier services at Savills, added: “In a fast-changing world, life sciences occupiers are continually reassessing how real estate strategies can help them to stay ahead of the competition by accessing the right talent, supporting cost optimisation, and driving environmental sustainability.
“It’s the former, however, that’s increasingly important in selecting sites: the industry is competing ever more with others for key talent in data science, automation, Gen AI and advanced robotics, to deliver data analysis, drug discovery, and laboratory optimisation.
“Many life science firms will therefore choose to locate in the top destinations in our Index to access this specialist talent, balancing the considerable outlay against the promise of accelerating future growth and driving process innovation for cost advantage. Others, however, may pay more consideration to the ability to compete for the best multidisciplinary talent in a market, and therefore developing life science hub locations may be more appropriate.”
