AstraZeneca announced the ‘topping out’ of its new R&D center and global corporate headquarters at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC). The company has already moved 2,000 employees to Cambridge, UK, including its biologics research and development arm, MedImmune. Occupation of the site will begin in stages in 2018.

The ‘topping out’ milestone represents the completion of the new building’s concrete frame.

The R&D site will become AstraZeneca’s largest center globally for oncology research, as well as housing scientists focused on respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. The site will also house a joint research center with the Medical Research Council, where partnering scientists will work side-by-side with AstraZeneca’s high throughput screening group.

AstraZeneca’s drug discovery scientists are working with Microsoft to use a cloud-based simulation that brings alive the millions of potential changes that make cancer cells multiply uncontrollably, to better understand the disease.

A novel agreement is also in place that will give researchers from the University of Cambridge access to key compounds from the AstraZeneca drugs pipeline.