Canary Wharf Group and life sciences specialist Kadans Science Partner have teamed up to build a £500M lab-led tower block in London’s Docklands.

The pair announced Tuesday that they will build a 750K SF, 22-storey tower at the 8.2-acre North Quay site in Canary Wharf. The scheme will be designed by architect KPF.

They said it would be the largest commercial wet lab-enabled life sciences building in Europe and form the first phase of a major health and life sciences campus on the North Quay site. Canary Wharf, which is owned by Brookfield and the Qatar Investment Authority, said in October at a Bisnow event it was looking to diversify its commercial holdings beyond traditional offices and retail into life sciences.

The history of the North Quay site sums up the way the office-led Canary Wharf estate is evolving. North Quay was once earmarked solely for offices, but in 2019 Canary Wharf Group sought revised planning for a commercial and residential scheme. In September last year, it received outline planning consent for up to 2.6M SF of commercial space on the site and up to 1.6M SF of residential space. And now it seems a big slug of that commercial space will be life sciences.

Bloomberg reported in 2021 that Canary Wharf had a deal in place for St Bartholomew’s hospital to take space at North Quay. The planning application submitted by Canary Wharf would not allow for a new hospital, but it would allow for a significantly sized diagnostics and research centre.

“The NHS is moving offices here to 20 Cabot Square, the NHS property division is moving to 10 Cabot Square,” Canary Wharf chief executive Shobi Khan told Bisnow in 2021 when asked whether it was possible to create a major life sciences cluster from scratch. “The kind of organisations that companies want to be near are already moving in. We want to partner with those kind of academic, research and governmental organisations that companies want to be near.”

Last year AXA IM Alts bought a stake in Kadans, which is led in the UK by James Sheppard. Kadans said that AXA would be partnering on this scheme.