Celebrating ten years of discovery at the Francis Crick Institute
A decade after it opened, the Francis Crick Institute is a world-leading centre for biomedical discovery. As one of six founding partners, Wellcome celebrates what this long-term collaboration has achieved and looks ahead to the innovations and health benefits its research could enable.
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When the Francis Crick Institute opened in 2016, it represented an ambitious new approach to biomedical research.
Wellcome, the Medical Research Council and Cancer Research UK joined University College London, Imperial College London and King’s College London to create an institute where researchers could cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries, share advanced technologies and pursue fundamental questions about life, health and disease.
Ten years on, that shared vision has created a thriving environment for discovery. Europe’s largest biomedical research institute now brings together scientists, clinicians, technical specialists and professional staff from more than 70 countries. Its researchers have produced more than 6,500 academic publications and collaborated with colleagues around the world.
These achievements reflect the talent and curiosity of the Crick community. Through public engagement and local outreach, the institute also connects its science with communities beyond its laboratories. Together, these contributions demonstrate what sustained collaboration between funders, universities and researchers can make possible.
Creating the conditions for discovery
Advances in health often begin with fundamental questions, and we cannot always predict where important discoveries will come from or how they will eventually be applied.
Wellcome supports researchers to pursue bold ideas and expansive questions. By providing resources, advanced technologies and opportunities to collaborate, we help create the conditions for discoveries that could transform our understanding of health.
The Crick was designed to embody this approach. Its building encourages interaction, while it’s university secondments, laboratories shared with industry and lack of traditional departments bring disciplines and institiutions together. Researchers can draw on the knowledge and networks of its founding partners and shared infrastructure to investigate questions that no single discipline could address alone.
Connections with clinicians and patients also help healthcare challenges inform laboratory research, while new scientific insights can open routes towards better ways to predict, prevent, diagnose and treat disease.
The Crick is also an international training hub. Its early-career group leader model gives emerging research leaders the independence to establish their own programmes before taking their experience and interdisciplinary approach to institutions around the world.
From discovery to health impact
Crick research is advancing understanding across cancer, infectious disease, human development, neuroscience and ageing.
Its scientists have revealed how tumours evolve and resist treatment and uncovered mechanisms linking air pollution with lung cancer. Researchers are also exploring connections between the immune system and mental health, developing patient-derived tissues to study disease and using genome editing to investigate which genetic changes are most likely to cause illness.
The Crick’s Science Technology Platforms concentrate specialist expertise and investment in advanced technologies, opening new research avenues and making them available across the institute and beyond.
Fundamental discoveries are also opening routes to innovation. Fifteen companies have emerged from the Crick and its founding institutions, attracting £2.3 billion in follow-on investment. Partnerships with universities, healthcare organisations and industry are helping connect discovery science with the expertise needed to develop potential diagnostics, technologies and treatments.
Looking towards the next decade
The Crick enters its second decade at a time of rapid change in biomedical science. Artificial intelligence, genome editing, advanced imaging and sophisticated models of human tissues are allowing researchers to study biology in new ways.
These tools could reveal how health and disease develop and how ageing, infection and environmental exposure interact over a lifetime. Turning that knowledge into better health will require the qualities on which the Crick was founded: curiosity, openness, collaboration and a willingness to work across established boundaries.
“The Francis Crick Institute shows what collaboration and investment in discovery research can make possible. Its first decade is a testament to the Crick community and the shared vision of its founding partners.
“Together, we have helped create an environment in which researchers can cross boundaries, use advanced technologies and pursue fundamental questions about life and disease.
“We are proud of what this partnership has enabled. As the Crick begins its next decade, we look forward to seeing how the research community continues to push the boundaries of knowledge and open new possibilities for improving health.”
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The Crick’s first ten years demonstrate the value of investing patiently in the foundations of science and the power of organisations working together around a shared ambition.
As the Crick enters its next decade, that collaboration will remain essential to turning new scientific possibilities into discoveries, innovations and health benefits that we cannot yet anticipate.
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