Royal Opening for the Wellcome Trust/MRC Building

Royal Opening for the Wellcome Trust/MRC Building

HRH the Princess Royal visited the Addenbrooke's Hospital site today (Monday 30 October 2000) and officially opened the Wellcome Trust/MRC Building. After touring the facilities and talking to staff, Her Royal Highness unveiled a commemorative plaque.

The Wellcome Trust/MRC Building is home to the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Mechanisms in Disease (part of the University of Cambridge) and the Medical Research Council's Dunn Nutrition Unit. The opening represents the launch of a major new research initiative that brings together the two great strengths of Cambridge - clinical and basic biomedical science.

Sir Keith Peters, Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, said that the Wellcome Trust Centre is a splendid new building, housing a centre that should be immensely powerful in progressing the application of knowledge to help with human suffering wordwide.

"The University of Cambridge, and its associated research institutes, has a unique record of advancing basic biomedical science, but now the time is right for the application of this science to the understanding of human disease," he said.

The joint project started in 1993 when the University's School of Clinical Medicine received a major capital award from the Wellcome Trust. At the same time the MRC was looking to re-house its Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge. It was decided that shared facilities would improve the efficiency of research and encourage collaboration.

Professor Jennie Blackwell, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre, said that a key feature of the Centre is that scientists work alongside clinically-qualified scientists to tackle the problems of disease.

"This provides every researcher in the Centre with access to cutting edge technologies, and the ability to cross major technical boundaries in studying the molecular mechanisms of disease," she said.

The MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit is concerned with the influence of nutrition on humans, including how energy is taken from food and the relationship between food and disease and longevity.

Sir John Walker, Director of the MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit, added that they would like to take advantage of recent advances in knowledge about the human genome and in molecular and genetic techniques to study the basic mechanisms of human nutrition, to identify factors in food that influence human health and longevity, and to understand how those factors act.

A second phase building, the Hutchison/MRC Research Building, is underway next door and will eventually provide accommodation for a new cancer research centre. This will be connected to the Wellcome/MRC building via a ground floor link and will share some support facilities.

For images of the building:
Look at the Wellcome Trust/MRC Building web site


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