UP TO 40 high-tech jobs will be created by gene therapy company Oxford BioMedica, which has paid £1.9m for a test drug manufacturing plant at Milton Park, near Didcot.

It is buying the plant, with so-called 'cleanrooms' which prevent microscopic impurities from entering the finished drugs, from Swedish company RecipharmCobra Biologics, which mothballed the building last year with the loss of 14 jobs.

Oxford BioMedica, which employs 78 staff at Oxford Science Park, raised £20m on the stockmarket last year to fund the purchase.

Spokesman Lara Mott said the new facility was expected to be running by 2012, but could not give a timetable for recruitment of the eventual 35-40-strong workforce, nor could she say what level of qualifications would be needed.

She added: "It's a highly complex, specialised procedure. We don't yet know the mix of technical staff, but we will need good people."

The plant will produce drugs for clinical trials involving volunteer patients with eye diseases or Parkinson's Disease.

The company's five products to be tested include RetinoStat, an experimental treatment for macular degeneration, one of the main causes of blindness in older people, and ProSavin, a potential treatment for Parkinson's.

Ms Mott said they were pleased to have found a suitable site so quickly. "When you have one clinical product, using a contract manufacturer is fine, but when you increase that fivefold, as we are doing, you need more control over manufacturing, and the ability to increase production in a timely fashion."

The test drugs will use the LentiVector technique, which allows genes to be delivered using a horse virus. BioMedica says owning its own plant, at an annual cost of £2.2m, will deliver long-term “operational and financial efficiencies” compared with outsourcing.

Oxford BioMedica chief executive John Dawson said: “As our ocular programme continues to advance we look forward to the significant growth of our clinical portfolio from two lead products to five clinical products using our proprietary LentiVector gene delivery technology.

"Investment in our specialist manufacturing processes will ensure the rapid progression of these five products.”

He said the company could also earn revenue by supplying drugs to bigger companies.

Simon Saxby, of RecipharmCobra Biologics, said the Milton Park building had been empty for about 12 months following the sale of Oxfordshire-based Cobra Therapeutics to Swedish-owned Recipharm.

It once employed more than 20 staff, and after a period of contraction the 14 remaining staff were made redundant last year. He was the only employee to move to Recipharm’s facility at Keele.

Cobra Therapeutics had bought the building following a £7m 2002 stockmarket flotation, with another £5.2m raised in 2003. At one time, Cobra had a stockmarket value of more than £9m, but was eventually sold for just under £1m.

Recipharm said the building was surplus because the Recipharm facility in Södertälje provided greater capacity and analytical capabilities, “which together with the Keele facility has enabled RecipharmCobra Biologics to offer enhanced service to clients”.