White City
Innovation District
The White City Innovation District (WCID) is home to a growing cluster of life science companies, including start-ups, scaleups and corporates.
WCID offers opportunities to collaborate with academic experts and students based at Imperial’s White City Deep Tech Campus as well as with clinicians based at the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s Hammersmith Hospital and Charing Cross Hospital.
WCID offers life sciences companies access to specialised equipment, a range of laboratory spaces (including Scale Space, I-HUB, and White City Place), the Imperial White City Incubator, accelerators, and industry-academic networks. WCID is a hub for interdisciplinary research programmes at scale in areas such as AI, molecular sciences, MedTech, engineering biology and climate science.
WCID is underpinned by the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham’s industrial strategy, Economic Growth for Everyone, and by Imperial. Together, they have created the foundations for an ecosystem which has attracted entrepreneurs and established innovators, all seeking new solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. WCID is part of the Imperial WestTech Corridor.
WCID has excellent transport links; it is the closest major business centre to Heathrow Airport, has the West End and the City of London within easy reach, and future HS2 connectivity from Old Oak Common.
Since 2017, there has been more than £6bn in growth investment into Hammersmith & Fulham businesses – the biggest in West London. 85% of that investment has been in the booming science, technology, engineering, medicine, maths and media (STEMMM) growth sectors, concentrated in WCID. The life sciences sector has benefited from over £1.8bn of investment, resulting in the creation of more than 2,700 local jobs.
WCID is constantly evolving and is home to more than 200 organisations in breakthrough industries, innovative public services, ground-breaking scientific research and a range of educational, social and community groups. Life sciences companies make up almost a quarter of the companies in the cluster and over half of those based on the Imperial White City Deep Tech campus.
Imperial’s White City Incubator is focussed on supporting companies in biotech, MedTech, climate solutions and drug research and discovery. The survival rate for companies coming through Imperial’s Incubator is 93 per cent. Since 2016, Incubator companies have raised over £430m in funding and created over 480 jobs.
Facilities & infrastructure
Additional information
White City Innovation District has a wide range of activities to connect academics, clinicians, industry, entrepreneurs, and local residents. The annual Jawdrop Life Sciences conference attracts over 300 attendees, with a focus on delving into the latest research and sharing this with a wider audience. It encourages collaboration by providing informal opportunities for academia and industry to meet.
The Life Sciences Roundtable launched in March 2021. Chaired by Professor Oscar Ces, Head of the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, this is an invitation-only group, meeting triennially for life science leaders in industry, academia and the NHS which facilitates collaboration, partnerships and knowledge exchange. The Deep Tech Network, organised by Upstream, Imperial’s Department of Chemistry and Enterprise Division, brings together business and Imperial’s researchers, developing a deep-tech innovation ecosystem around Imperial’s White City Campus.
The main life science cluster in White City has a strong relationship with life sciences businesses across the London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham that actively participate in the cluster’s networks and events. Hammersmith itself is home to Orchard Therapeutics, Medidata and Achilles Therapeutics, whilst Epsilogen and Sania Therapeutics are based in the growing Advanced Research Clusters (ARC) development on the riverfront.
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