Major Wellcome Trust award to take science from the bench to the bedside

1 December 2006

Clinicians and scientists studying how a variety of human diseases arise have received a major boost today. The Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (CIMR), University of Cambridge, where researchers look at the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms behind disease, has been awarded one of the prestigious Wellcome Trust Strategic Awards. The £4 million grant will enable CIMR to stay at the cutting edge of research into how diseases arise and to play a key role training tomorrow's academic doctors and medical scientists.

CIMR is a multidisciplinary research centre whose outstanding feature is the interweaving of clinical medicine with molecular and cell biology. Since it opened in 1998, it has led key research into how viruses evade our immune system, genetic susceptibility to diabetes and progress towards novel treatments for Alzheimer's and Huntington's disease.

"What we are striving to provide in CIMR is an effective interface between basic and clinical science to underpin our goal of determining and understanding the molecular mechanisms of disease," says Professor Paul Luzio, Director of CIMR. "With the support of the Wellcome Trust we have attracted outstanding basic and clinical scientists to the Institute. The Strategic Award will underpin our scientific infrastructure, helping us bring scientifically trained clinicians back into research after their specialist clinical training.

"Our Institute is not disease-specific but our focus over the next few years will provide insights into the molecular pathology of many diseases and help to identify novel therapeutic targets. CIMR will continue to be a great place to work for those whose primary interests are focused on disease and for some who are more interested in basic cellular mechanisms that, when they malfunction, result in disease. "

As well as facilitating collaboration between clinicians and basic scientists, CIMR also aims to play a key role in training tomorrow's academic doctors and medical scientists. The Strategic Award will allow CIMR to run 'Next Generation Fellowships', intended to attract clinicians into research at the conclusion of their clinical training. It will also establish a four-year PhD programme to provide basic scientists with an opportunity to undertake PhD training and explore interdisciplinary research opportunities.

"Training clinicians to undertake basic biomedical science is fundamentally important for the future of biomedicine in the UK," says Dr Mark Walport, Director of the Wellcome Trust. "Building strong collaborative teams of clinicians and basic scientists, as CIMR does, is therefore essential."

Research at CIMR aims to understand a variety of human illnesses at a molecular and cellular level. To do this, research teams look at how our genes operate and are constructed; how molecules move around and function in cells; how proteins interact physically; and how our bodies defend us against infection.

Key researchers at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research include:

Professor Fiona Karet

As a renal physician Professor Karet is particularly interested in how the kidney does its normal 'housekeeping' work - maintaining steady levels of many different substances such as salt and other ions in the body. To get at these important functions at the molecular level, her lab has been studying inherited disorders. One advantage of CIMR's location is that she combines her research activities with running a specialist clinic in Addenbrooke's Hospital, where patients with inherited kidney problems and their families are seen.

Professor Paul Lehner

Professor Lehner studies interactions between microbes and the immune system. His group identified two viral gene products from the Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpes virus, which down-regulate important cell surface receptors, including MHC class I molecules. Other work has focused on the important role of the receptor CCR5 in controlling infection by mycobacteria, such as TB.

Professor David Lomas

Professor Lomas has elucidated the molecular mechanism underlying a new class of disease that he has called the serpinopathies. The actual disease depends on the serpin that is affected but can lead to conditions such as cirrhosis, thrombosis and the early-onset dementia FENIB (familial encephalopathy with neuroserpin inclusion bodies). His work has only been possible because of close links with basic scientists, which have allowed the use of biophysics, electron microscopy, crystallography, cell biology and fly models to provide fundamental insights into the mechanisms of disease and to develop novel strategies for therapeutic intervention.

Professor Margaret Robinson

Professor Robinson is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow studying how proteins are transported between the various organelles of the cell by vesicles, which bud from one membrane and fuse with another. Professor Robinsons' team has discovered protein complexes that are involved in this process and, when disrupted by mutation, cause the genetic disorder Hermansky-Pudlak syndrome.

Professor David Rubinsztein

Professor Rubinsztein's lab studies conditions that are caused by mutant proteins that form aggregates inside cells (e.g. Huntington's disease). The team uses a range of approaches to elucidate the different ways that such mutations result in pathology. See A tangled tale: Huntington's disease ('Wellcome Science', April 2006).

Professor John Todd

Using an integrated combination of genetics; statistics; genome informatics and data mining; and gene expression and functional studies, Professor Todd's group aims to discover the molecular bases for the common autoimmune disease type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes.

Dr Geoff Woods

There are many rare genetic disorders that affect the development of the nervous system (the nerves, the spinal cord and the brain). Dr Woods has been trying to find some of the genes that cause these disorders. While each condition is rare, collectively they are a significant problem in child health, for example causing mental retardation, fits and cerebral palsy. Working at CIMR has allowed Dr Woods to start to achieve this marriage of clinical genetics and basic science. See Is size everything? Controlling human brain size ('Wellcome Science', October 2005).

Contact

Craig Brierley
Media Officer
Wellcome Trust
T +44 (0)20 7611 7329
E c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk

Notes for editors

1. The Wellcome Trust is the most diverse biomedical research charity in the world, spending about £450 million every year both in the UK and internationally to support and promote research that will improve the health of humans and animals. The Trust was established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome, and is funded from a private endowment, which is managed with long-term stability and growth in mind.