Savills commented last week that total investment volumes for life sciences related real estate across the "Knowledge Arc" of Oxford and Cambridge hit a record £1.65bn in 2022 (up about £50m from 2021). In addition, there were notable transactions to the tune of £200m in Potters Bar (the funding of the Ascend Cell & Gene Therapy facility) and Stevenage (UBS and Reef acquiring 33 acres of land from GlaxoSmithKline).

Further key deals included L&G's sale of 194-198 Cambridge Science Park to Cadillac Fairview and Stanhope for £85m, and the sale of the Botanic Place development to Railpen. In Oxford, Life Science REIT acquired the Technology Park for c.£180m, and Brydell Partners spend £20.4m for property on the Science Park. 

This is just a small sample of the diverse range of UK and overseas buyers interested in the sector - James Emams rightly calls the buyer pool "extraordinarily healthy", with apparently over 20 different purchasers transacting last year, and nearly 3 times this number active in the investment market going into 2023.

The sector continues to have an undersupply of stabilised assets and so will remain resilient. We are likely to see further development exposure, with Savills' expectation being that this will be largely speculative. Tom Mellows comments that occupiers are "desperately in need of good quality accommodation", and that underpins Savills' estimate that there is in excess of £15bn of live capital in the UK life sciences sector. 

And the Arc is definitely now becoming more of a Triangle, with increasingly more life sciences related development happening across London. Sites like White City Place have come to the fore more recently, with further development ear-marked in Shepherd's Bush Market. Canary Wharf also looks primed to pivot into this sector and potentially morph into a giant life sciences hub, replacing the suits of professional service providers with the lab-coats of STEM professionals.