Scottish Development International, a government sponsoredentity charged with boosting the country's economic base, choseAlexandria due to its position as North America's leading realestate investment trust dedicated to the life sciences market.Alexandria already has a presence in most of the US markets thatEdinburgh hopes to compete against, including Cambridge, MA, SanFrancisco and North Carolina.

"Alexandria's reputation for outstanding life science clusterdevelopment, combined with Scotland's reputation for producingoutstanding science, will act as a magnet for some of the world'sleading scientists, researchers and companies," predicts SDIofficial Jack Perry. Alexandria owns and operates more than 11million sf of office/laboratory properties in North America, andhas another six million sf in various stages of construction. Thelatter category includes Mission Bay in San Francisco and EastRiver Science Park in New York City.

"We look forward to applying our successful life science clusterbusiness model to this effort to create a world-class destinationof choice for the industry," says Alexandria CEO Joel Marcus, whocited the nearby University of Edinburgh's position as an academicglobal leader in biotechnology as one source of researchtalent.