Transparency is a word pharma companies often like to use, but, in practice, they rarely live up to the ideal. AstraZeneca is trying to be truly transparent with its new Discovery Centre (DISC).
The DISC’s creation was something of a saga: The original plan to relocate from its Alderley Park, U.K., site to Cambridge, U.K., was announced back in 2013. The idea was for the Big Pharma to move 2,000 staff to the new site by 2016. That plan was delayed, and the grand opening didn't happen until 2021.
The DISC was originally planned to cost around 330 million pounds sterling ($440 million at the time), but this later ballooned to 1.1 billion pounds, thanks in part to the complexity of the building as well as investment in more cutting-edge technology, inflation and the impact of the 2016 Brexit vote on the pound.
Throughout the process, doubts lingered over whether the payoff would match the scale of the investment and upheaval. Pascal Soriot, who became AstraZeneca’s CEO in 2012 and championed the move, envisioned the facility as one of three hubs anchoring the company’s global R&D network.
I visited the site in early fall, the same week AstraZeneca was vying for the Stirling Prize after being shortlisted for the U.K.’s top architectural honor earlier in the year.
Cities around the world aspire to be “the Boston of somewhere”—a nod to the Massachusetts city’s status as the world’s most concentrated biotech hub. Cambridge doesn’t. With its thousand-year history, world-class university and thriving life sciences and healthcare ecosystem, the city has little interest in imitation.
The DISC building sits just a stone’s throw from Cancer Research UK, with which AstraZeneca has multiple collaborations and cross-functional teams. It’s also next to the Jeffrey Cheah Biomedical Centre, the storied Addenbrooke’s Hospital and a new hospital rising across the road. AstraZeneca’s scientists have links to all of them.
A new train station just meters from the site is nearing completion, improving access for travelers from London and beyond—and sparing them the current two-mile walk or e-scooter ride to Cambridge’s main station.
Everywhere you look, AstraZeneca is signaling transparency. The entire circular building is made of glass, offering clear views into nearly every lab, where scientists can be seen at work.
“That took a bit of getting used to,” Steve Rees, senior vice president of discovery sciences, R&D, said of scientists being able to be viewed throughout their working day, but now it’s a part of the culture.
Culture is a watchword for AstraZeneca. The company is one of the few in the industry to allow a journalist to tour the site without restrictions and to interview multiple executives with no conditions set in advance.
I was shown every part of the building—from the basement to the labs to the open workspaces—where AstraZeneca’s pipeline is on full display. Inside the DISC, members of the public are welcome to visit the café, where subsidized prices make a cup of coffee far cheaper than in the city.
Pharma companies have long been defined by secrecy, driven by fears of proprietary information leaking and potential patent disputes. That’s not the case here. Some of AstraZeneca’s work—especially its early-stage research processes—is open to others. “We can patent drugs, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to patent processes,” one scientist explained.
That process allows for much quicker hit rates on early-stage targets, setting up less risky bets as molecules move from preclinical to later stages. Investors want to know how phase 3 trials work out, but AZ is going back to the start, trying to better ensure that early bets can translate into later wins.
It’s a real sea change. Just over a decade ago, AstraZeneca was struggling. The company was reeling from a string of mid- and late-stage failures, a falling share price and rumors that Pfizer was circling, eyeing a quick and cut-rate buyout.
But Soriot steadied the ship through its tumultuous waters, keeping AZ independent and creating a new culture from the bottom up—and one that puts R&D at its heart.
“Having science at the center of DISC helps drive the business,” said David Wilson, VP and global head of oncology chemistry and DMPK, oncology R&D at AstraZeneca.
And that has come from Soriot. “[Soriot] absolutely wants to know what can move the dial on discovering new medicines,” Wilson explained. “I have lots of talks with Pascal, and, right now, we’re having discussions around whether we need more data scientists; how do we invest in the next generation of CAR-Ts? How do we solve the solid tumor problem [with cell therapies]? He wants to hear this from the scientists and thinking about how we can reach the right direction.”
Now, AstraZeneca is seeing more phase 2 and 3 wins than it could have ever hoped for in the early days of Soriot’s tenure. The week I visited the company revealed another phase 3 success for its blood pressure drug baxdrostat, and it was also gearing up for the European cancer congress ESMO in Berlin the week after.
The ties extend beyond business. Most weeks, AstraZeneca welcomes local schoolchildren into the DISC, where they don lab coats and goggles and take part in hands-on experiments designed to let them role-play as lab techs and scientists.
“We don’t need to find the next generation of scientists from their teenage years, that can be too late,” said Rees. “We want to find them in primary school.”
It’s not all playtime, however, and politics still endure. Just before my visit, AstraZeneca announced a pause in the 200 million pound ($271 million) investment at Cambridge. The $271 million was meant to fund a facility near AstraZeneca’s Cambridge headquarters that would have employed about 1,000 people, AZ said when the expansion was first announced.
The company is keen to stress this is a pause, not an outright cancellation. Many other Big Pharmas in the U.K., including Merck and Eli Lilly, have also delayed or halted construction and investment projects. The slowdown comes as the Trump administration pressures companies to build and invest more in the U.S.
AZ is building out a new site in Kendall Square, having also announced recent new investments in China and manufacturing work in the U.S., in line with many other Big Pharmas who are heeding President Donald Trump’s call.
Just this week, Politico revealed that sources have told the news outlet the U.K. government is now considering raising National Health Service spending on drugs, in part to stave off Trump’s tariff threats.
This has long been a goal for pharmaceutical companies in the U.K. Allowing higher drug prices promises greater returns on investment, which could, in turn, spur more reinvestment in the country. AstraZeneca plans to wait to see whether that materializes.
While others retreat from the U.K., the DISC remains central to AstraZeneca’s ambitions. The site encompasses nearly every area of research and anchors the company’s global R&D network.