UCL awarded £13.5 million to advance medical research facilities

As part of the Clinical Research Infrastructure Initiative, UCL has been awarded £13.5 million for a number of projects to help advance clinical research. The award was announced today by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne as part of a £230 million investment, led by the Medical Research Council (MRC), into state-of-the-art technologies aimed at identifying the causes of diseases such as cancer and dementia and dramatically speeding up diagnosis and treatment. Speaking in Exeter, Chancellor George Osborne said: "The funding will go to 23 truly innovative projects from across the UK today that represent the best of British ingenuity and scientific exploration. The Government, charities, universities and industry will be working together to advance our knowledge in combatting the biggest medical challenges of our time." The UCL projects that will benefit from the award are: - A Theranostic Approach to Patients with Cancer (£5.3M). The novel programme led by Professor Mark Emberton (Director, UCL Division of Surgery and Interventional Science & Honorary Consultant Urologist, UCLH) and Dr Shonit Punwani (Reader in Magnetic Resonance and Cancer Imaging, UCL Centre for Medical Imaging & Consultant Radiologist, UCLH) aims to revolutionise diagnosis, risk stratification and therapy for people with cancer, based on innovations in MRI technology. The group will combine and develop the latest imaging technologies with an understanding of the cellular and molecular environment of cancers in order to verify whether a lesion on an image is cancer and predict its aggressiveness.