01.08.12
Phenome Centre a ‘phenomenal legacy’ of Games
A £10m science research centre is to be set up on the site of Olympic drug-testing laboratories, the Prime Minister is to announce.
The Phenome facility will undertake research to understand physical characteristics such as hair and eye colour, as well as investigating diseases such as dementia and diabetes.
This will lead to the development of new drugs and treatment as well as benefiting patients with faster and more accurate diagnosis.
The centre will be set up in Harlow, Essex and will be funded with £10m from the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research, over five years. Drugs company GlaxoSmithKline is providing the facilities and equipment, which will be operated by experts from Kings College London.
Cameron is expected to say: “When the Games close, all this incredible equipment and expertise will be used to establish a new Phenome Centre for research into biological markers of health and disease.
“This will take advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that lie in combining genetic data with the results of medical tests on tissues and blood. It will allow us to understand the characteristics of disease and how these link into genes and our environment.
“It’s an impressive example of collaboration between top-class research, the NHS and industry. It will produce new forms of drugs and it will lead the world in the development of precision medicine.”
Health secretary Andrew Lansley added: “Our investment in this new centre, the first of its kind, promises better targeted treatments for patients with a wide range of common diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia.”
“This research centre will transform our understanding of people’s physical characteristics and disease, and enable us to pull these discoveries into real benefits for patients.”
England’s chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, said: “This has the potential to revolutionise the way in which we treat a wide range of diseases.”
Professor Sir John Savill, chief executive of the MRC, said: “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.”
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