Olympian effort for healthcare

The anti-doping facilities for the London 2012 Games will be developed into a resource to help revolutionize healthcare. The MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre will use these facilities to help develop more targeted treatment for patients.

The centre will be funded for five years with an investment of £5 million each from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Department of Health’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). It will build on and develop the equipment and expertise of the facilities provided by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and operated by King’s College London. The centre will be guided by a collaboration of academic partners, led by Imperial College London, and two analytical equipment suppliers: Bruker and the Waters Corporation.

The MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre will enable researchers to explore the characteristics of disease to develop new drugs and treatments for patients. This knowledge will aid scientists in finding new, safer and more targeted treatments.

Professor Sir John Savill, Chief Executive of the MRC, said: “The UK has an extremely strong life sciences capability and world-class expertise in this area of research. The GSK drug-testing facility at Harlow has taken one of the major challenges associated with this type of research — achieving high-throughput alongside forensic quality control – to a new level, unprecedented anywhere in the world. Rather than losing this investment once the Games are over the collaboration – involving the MRC, NIHR, UK universities, the NHS and NIHR Biomedical Research Centres, and industry leaders in the field – will provide a unique resource that will ultimately result in benefits for patients. This is a phenomenal legacy from the Games.”

Patrick Vallance, President, Pharmaceuticals R&D at GlaxoSmithKline, added: “Providing our laboratory facilities to this research collaboration allows GlaxoSmithKline to support cutting-edge research. The MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre will deliver world-class science through collaboration between research institutes, academia and industry — an approach GSK believes is crucial to driving scientific innovation.”

Dr Rohit Khanna, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for Waters Corporation, said: “Waters is proud to be part of this first-of-a-kind research centre and the opportunity to work with such distinguished partners in support of our mission: to develop technology that allows science to provide answers to the critical challenges we face. This centre is a significant advancement for the science of phenome-typing, enabled by a powerful partnership of leading academic institutions, government and companies like ours providing the latest innovations. We fully expect this centre will multiply our understanding of disease and help us to improve the health of populations around the world.”

For more information please visit ref="http://www.waters.com">www.waters.com