A science revolution in York is set to create more than 1,600 jobs over the next four years.

Science Minister Lord Sainsbury, speaking before he launched a £630,000 Science City York project today, heralded York's importance as a key centre for the technological revolution sweeping Britain.

He said the city was well on the way to becoming a leading centre in the bioscience field - and the point was emphasised when he opened a £2 million scientific instrument, the Accelerator Mass Spectrometer, at the Central Science Laboratory at Sand Hutton.

The 20-tonne AMS, which carried out a highly sensitive analysis of atoms, is the first in the world to be devoted to biomedical research on a commercial basis, and will cut the time and cost of developing new drugs to cure life-threatening diseases.

The bio-science boom gained further momentum today when York University announced it had won a grant of just over £1 million from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council to open a new Structural Biology Centre.

Now the Science City project is seeking to capitalise on York's bio-science success by developing two other inter-related industries: information communication technology and heritage and arts technology.

The project aims to create a modern, vibrant local economy and it is estimated that, directly and indirectly, more than 1,600 jobs will be created in the city by 2002 through the arrival of more than 100 new businesses and business expansions.

And about 1,000 of these jobs are expected to go to local people.

Science City York is being steered by a partnership of public and private sector organisations, including City of York Council, York University, the York

Inward Investment Board and North Yorkshire Inward Investment Board, and has received financial backing from the European Union.

Lord Sainsbury, speaking in an exclusive interview with the Evening Press, said that after America, Britain was the best bio-tech country in the world.

"It is absolutely important that we develop our lead in this area," he said.

"York is already well on the way to becoming a leading centre. Drug development is going to be changing a great deal with bio-science."

"There is no doubt that those are the sort of jobs that we will really see growing in number in the future."

"More and more one wants to see regional policy being about growing your own new businesses because those are the ones that will bring most stability to an area."

Lord Sainsbury described the launch of the AMS at the Ministry of Agriculture labs as an "extremely exciting initiative". The highly sensitive equipment, which has been brought to the area by York University subsidiary CBAMS Ltd, will not only help drug companies develop medicines more quickly and safely; it should also help reduce the number of animals needed to undergo drug-testing. It could also be used to help confectioners such as Nestl; Rowntree devise new sweets for the 21st century.

see NEWS 'Why York is so stuck on science'

see COMMENT 'Bold bid to be a science city'

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