Babraham Bioscience Technologies

Babraham Bioscience Technologies Limited (BBT) is the wholly-owned trading company of the Babraham Institute. Incorporated in 1996, as the vehicle through which commercial developments on the Babraham Research Campus are implemented, BBT has developed a portfolio of activities that facilitate wider engagement with the biomedical, biotechnological and pharmaceutical sectors.

BBT brings together the Babraham Institute’s world-renowned research, its facilities and its ideal geographical location at the core of the Cambridge cluster, to provide an holistic approach to knowledge transfer (KT). By coalescing scientific, technological and commercial excellence we are delivering the Institute’s KT policies through the wider landscape of the Babraham Research Campus - promoting innovation across the academic and commercial divide. BBT seeks to exploit the science and technology originating from the Institutes’s research programmes and is driving the commercial development of the Babraham Research campus to promote Regional development through the exploitation of the biosciences.

Corporate Governance
Babraham Bioscience Technologies Ltd (BBT) is the wholly-owned trading subsidiary of the Babraham Institute (BI). BBT has a separate Board of Directors from the Institute consisting of a mixture of Executive and Non-Executive Directors. Together the BI and BBT are known as ‘Babraham Group’. The Boards have two joint sub-committees – the Audit Committee was constituted as a joint committee in 2003 to ensure that Babraham Group issues are looked at holistically. The Property Committee was constituted in 2005 to ensure that developments on the Babraham Research Campus are coordinated, mirroring the single coherent Babraham Group executive structure for managing the estate strategy.

The Babraham Group strives to promote corporate fairness, transparency and accountability and further information about the Group’s activities and future operations are provided in our Corporate Report and Corporate Plan.

The Babraham Group shares the Babraham Research Campus with like-minded small and medium-sized biotech companies. The Campus is expanding to accommodate these twin activities of research and commercial activity and the Babraham Group provides estate, scientific, technical, business and utility services to all on an a la carte and charged for basis. The Group is committed to adopting and promoting environmental best practice in connection with carrying out its own operations, and to ensuring that its tenants, suppliers and contractors do the same.

BBT milestones
BBT was founded in 1996 as the Babraham Institute’s Trading Company. After early operation as a virtual entity, BBT became an active concern in 1998, delivering commercial activities for the Babraham Group. The company took on the direct exploitation of the science and technology deriving from the Institute’s research programmes and took responsibility for the costs associated with managing the Institute’s patent portfolio and other commercial activities., Generation of commercial gain from the Group’s technical services and managing commercial opportunities deriving from the Babraham Bioincubator and the Babraham Research Campus also fall within BBT’s remit.

Building on the success of the Bioincubator model, BBT established a new approach supporting technology translation in 2003, 'Babraham BioConcepts', which works with innovators at the earliest stage and aims to accelerate translation of technologies in parallel with developing commercially viable business models as investment-ready propositions. This programme was initially supported by the East of England Development Agency and subsequently formed the basis for Aitua Ltd which was established in June 2006.

The commercial development of the campus has entered a new phase in its evolution with the opening of Minerva in September 2005. This facility was the first building in the Babraham Research Campus' unique offering which underscores the campus’ pivotal role in encouraging and nurturing bioscience innovation within the Cambridge Cluster.