Wellcome Director visits Edinburgh’s CRF

The future is bright for clinical research in the UK.That is the message that Dr Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust research charity, will deliver tonight when he visits Edinburgh’s Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, as guest speaker at their annual keynote lecture.

As head of the UK’s leading charitable funding agency, Mark Walport manages a budget that awards over £400 million a year to the scientific community in the UK and overseas - of which, in recent years, Edinburgh scientists have consistently appeared in their top five list of recipients.

In his speech tonight, Mark Walport will stress the importance of ensuring that scientific research ultimately benefits health - a key principle that guides those working in Edinburgh’s Clinical Research Facility, one of five such facilities in the UK that have been funded by the Wellcome Trust.

"If clinical research is to thrive, we must have good people, good buildings and a good environment in which to operate," say Walport."Attracting people into a profession that is challenged by financial constraints, lacks a clear career path and suffers from limited infrastructure, is a problem.

"I do feel that there are now opportunities on the horizon that will enable us to strengthen clinical research in the UK.The Wellcome Trust hopes to work with others to make an academic clinical career more attractive, improve training and boost infrastructure.This is good news for scientists, clinicians and patients alike."

Mark Walport will be addressing an audience of around 100 health professionals and researchers.The lecture is part of the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility's education programme, which runs seminars and courses for budding researchers (www.wtcrf.ed.ac.uk/education/index.htm).

ENDS

Media contacts:

Noorece Ahmed or Mark Anderson – 020 7611 8866

n.ahmed@wellcome.ac.uk

m.anderson@wellcome.ac.uk

Notes to editor:

1. The Wellcome Trust is an independent research funding charity established in 1936 under the will of the tropical medicine pioneer Sir Henry Wellcome. The Trust’s mission is to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health and it currently spends over £400 million per annum.