The Minister for Science and Universities, the Rt Hon David Willetts, announced today that the Medical Research Council (MRC) has made an investment of £8.9 million to a consortium of institutions, including the Francis Crick Institute.
The grant was given for 'Medical Bioinformatics: Data-Driven Discovery for Personalised Medicine'. The funding will be used to create a shared offsite datacentre, eMedLab.
This resource will allow scientists to analyse human genome data and medical images, together with clinical and other physiological and social data, for the benefit of human health.
The collaborative resource will be shared by University College London, Queen Mary University London, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Francis Crick Institute, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the European Bioinformatics Institute.
The funding will also support the recruitment of four career development fellows or junior group leaders.
Overall, the MRC announced today that it is investing a total of £32 million across five major, strategic medical bioinformatics projects. It is the latest instalment of a £90 million funding initiative to tackle 'big data' challenges for the advancement of medical research.
The MRC is a founding partner of the Francis Crick Institute. Its largest institute, the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), is dedicated to studying important questions about the life processes that are relevant to all aspects of human health. NIMR researchers will move into the Crick when it opens in late-2015.
Dr Jim Smith, Director of NIMR, said: "As we continue to advance our understanding of the complexity of human health and disease, it becomes increasingly important that we have the access to the necessary computing power. This shared infrastructure, which builds on investments in the Farr Institute and Genomics England, will allow us and our partners to carry out complex data analysis in important disease areas such as cancer, cardiovascular and rare diseases."
