The life sciences segment was not even a feature of the 2021 property market, it seems. In their Emerging Trends in Real Estate Asia Pacific 2022 report, PwC and the Urban Land Institute polled Asia Pacific–focused investors for the first time on their interest in the sector. And that interest is extremely high. Life sciences sits behind only data centres in terms of investor interest and demand.

But how do we categorise this sliver of the market? Graeme Torre, head of real estate in Asia for the Dutch pension fund manager APG Asset Management, first gets a little existential, as befits a sector devoted to our human being. What is life sciences? Does an office building count, when it simply puts four walls around white-collar workers in the sector? At the other end of the spectrum, you have purpose-built and specialised research and development laboratories, incubator workshops, or product-specific drug-manufacturing sites.

In Torre’s eyes, thereâ