Guy’s and St Thomas’, with its university partner, King’s College London, is delighted that the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has awarded our Biomedical Research Centre £58.7 million funding over the next five years. This will support an ambitious and exciting programme of translational research that will directly benefit our patients through new and better treatments and improved health outcomes.
This sustained investment will enable us to continue to attract talented scientists and clinicians and to capitalise on the investment that we have already made in state-of-the-art facilities and equipment and an extensive training programme since the original funding award in 2007. Our Biomedical Research Centre forms the heart of an ‘experimental medicine hub’ at Guy’s and also benefits from substantial investment in Clinical Research Facilities and the latest imaging technology at St Thomas’.
Chief Executive, Ron Kerr says: “We are grateful to the NIHR for this generous award, which recognises the huge progress that we have made in driving forward translational research that takes discoveries from the laboratory and into the clinic at the earliest opportunity.
“This new funding will allow us to deliver a truly innovative research strategy. We will focus on pulling through early discovery of new drugs, molecules and biomarkers into the clinic – and then extending these beyond the hospital and into the wider community through close collaboration with primary care.
“Our scientists and clinicians are at the forefront of developing some of the latest diagnostic techniques and therapeutics so that we can tailor both diagnosis and treatment to individual patients. They are also developing talented young researchers and we will use this opportunity to establish the UK’s first School of Translational and Experimental Medicine.
“We will build on key areas of strength, such as the better understanding of transplantation and rejection, and more targeted treatment of cancer. We will also extend our research into our local population in South East London, for example, by broadening the EXHALE study that is investigating the effect of pollution and the Low Emission Zone on lung disease and health amongst school children in East London."
As part of King's Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) we work closely with colleagues at South London and Maudsley and King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trusts to ensure health service research drives innovation and new treatments that will benefit patients. We are delighted that in addition to the £58.7 million award to our own Biomedical Research Centre, a further £53.3 million has been awarded for mental health research within the AHSC.
Professor Robert Lechler, Executive Director King’s Health Partners and Vice-Principal (Health), King’s College London said:
“These awards are recognition of King’s Health Partners’ unparalleled translational research portfolio and reflect the research expertise and excellence fostered by the successful partnership between our NHS organisations and King’s College London university.
“The continued funding to King’s Health Partners’ Biomedical Research Centres will ensure that our scientists and clinicians can continue to develop new advances in healthcare and translate their research into clinical practice as fast as possible to benefit patients locally, nationally and internationally. In particular, the increased award to our BRC for Mental Health, together with the new award of a Biomedical Research Unit in Dementia, celebrates King’s Health Partners' progress in the integration of physical and mental health research and will help us achieve one of our main aims as a world-leading Academic Health Sciences Centre – to close the gap between physical and mental healthcare.”
Posted on Thursday 18th August 2011