Ten years after scientists cracked our genetic code, genome sequencing is being used to treat genetic diseases and improve people's lives.
The value of medical research was made clear on the BBC's Horizon programme 'Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome'.
The programme helps three people, each with a genetic disease, understand the underlying cause of their illness and shows how the work scientists are doing now could lead to effective treatments within the next ten years.
Their journey takes them to leading medical research institutes funded by UKCMRI's founder organisations - including the Wellcome Trust's Sanger Institute, the Medical Research Council's Research Complex at Harwell, UCL laboratories, and the Institute of Cancer Research, partly funded by Cancer Research UK - where science leaders explain how they use genome sequencing to identify what causes certain diseases to develop and how gene therapy has already been used to treat them.
Research in this area has the potential to have a positive impact on the lives of countless people all over the world, for this and future generations.
Once it is established, UKCMRI will be integral to advancing our knowledge of diseases such as cancer, heart disease and stroke, infections and diseases of the immune system, brain and nervous system, and to our understanding of tissue and organ development.
Its interdisciplinary approach along with its proximity to an exceptional cluster of research and academic institutions in London will help turn discoveries made in the laboratory into many of the cures, vaccines and drugs from which the NHS and its patients will benefit for many years.
Horizon: 'Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome' is available on BBC iplayer.
