The UK Biocentre provides a centre of excellence for biomedical research to the academic, pharmaceutical and biotech research community.
At UK Biocentre, they have scaled up to analyse COVID-19 swabs. Robotic equipment will enable us to analyse tens of thousands of swabs every day. Testing at scale with high levels of accuracy is vital. None of this would be possible without their dedicated staff, 150 volunteer scientists and the support of the NHS, Public Health England, the British Army, Royal Navy and their industrial partners – who have all played a vital role to help them scale up operations and ensure accuracy.
Hear more from the people who helped make this possible:
They are one of three new Lighthouse Labs – the biggest diagnostic testing network the country has ever seen – supporting the national COVID-19 testing effort.
UK Biocentre was established in 2011 as the service arm of UK Biobank, a national research initiative that collected biological samples and data from 500,000 UK volunteers. UK Biobank is regarded as the world’s premier biobank and implemented an industrialised approach to biological sample processing and management that is now available, through UK Biocentre, to the international scientific research community.
At UK Biocentre they have transformed their facility to test swab samples for COVID-19 on an industrial scale.This would not have been possible