Research partners

Medical Research Council Centres

The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a Government-funded organisation dedicated to improving human health. The Council supports research across the spectrum of medical sciences, in universities and hospitals and in MRC centres in the UK and Africa. Our university partner, King’s College London, has five Medical Research Council centres:  

• Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma (with Imperial College London)
• Centre for Environment and Heath
• Centre for Transplantation
• Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre

Experimental Medicine Hub

Our Experimental Medicine Hub brings together a critical mass of research activity in one location based at Guy’s Hospital.

• a Clinical Research Facility to provide scientists and clinicians with dedicated space for studies involving healthy volunteers and patients.
• a facility for phase-one drug research trials, including first-in-man studies, run by Quintiles - the world’s only fully integrated biopharmaceutical services company.
• our National Institute for Health Research comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre’s Faculty of Translational Medicine, and the King’s Health Partners Clinical Trials Office with dedicated staff to advise on all aspects of commercial and non-commercial trials.
• a cutting-edge pharmacy manufacturing unit producing medication on site for clinical trials, NHS patients and commercial sale.
• a purpose-built stem cell laboratory where researchers contribute to increasing knowledge about diseases such as cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s disease and a Centre for Preimplantation Genetic Diagnostics (PGD). This is the largest PGD programme of its kind in the UK, providing treatment for approximately 200 couples each year.

Across King’s Health Partners there are specialist research centres focussing on certain clinical and scientific areas:

• British Heart Foundation Centre of Research Excellence was established in April 2008 to promote leading research and training in cardiovascular research. The Centre brings together internationally renowned scientists and clinicians from the Cardiovascular Division, Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics and Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering who are focused on work that leads to advances in the early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of heart diseases.
   
• Breakthrough Breast Cancer Research Unit opened in November 2007. Researchers at the unit investigate the molecular pathology and biology of invasive breast carcinoma to identify and validate novel therapy targets, prognostic factors and biomarkers for these poorly-understood forms of breast cancer.
   
• Arthritis Research UK Experimental Arthritis Treatment Centre goals are to investigate new and better ways to diagnose and treat patients with inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, and connective tissue diseases like lupus.
   
• Centre for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine focuses on how the differentiated state of adult tissues is maintained, by using mammalian skin as a model system. Current projects are concerned with self-renewal and lineage selection by human and mouse epidermal stem cells, and the role of stem cells in tumour formation.
   
• King’s Health Partners Centre for Neurodegeneration Research brings together scientists investigating the causative mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, especially Alzheimer's disease and motor neurone disease in the laboratory with clinical colleagues investigating patients and conducting clinical trials.

• The Centre for Developmental Neurobiology aims to understand the mechanisms that control brain development and how deviations from the normal plan lead to disease. The Centre has a team of over 130 researchers and is part of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London.