The Wellcome Sanger Institute
A world-leading centre of genomic research for human health.
The Wellcome Sanger Institute is a UK-based genomic research centre funded by Wellcome to improve human health and understand life on earth. It was originally set up to support and accelerate the global effort to sequence the whole human genome, one of the most important milestones in the history of biology. The project took over ten years and has changed our understanding of the biological basis of almost all diseases and influenced the way in which many are diagnosed and treated.
Since then, the Wellcome Sanger Institute has continued to play a leading role in the global development of genomic research, generating new fields of discovery, translating results into real world advances, creating new industries and ensuring that the progress made benefits everyone.
The origins and growth of the Wellcome Sanger Institute
In the late 1980s and early 90s, scientists increasingly believed that decoding the information in our genes could reveal new ways to understand life on earth and human health. To explore this, heavy investment and global collaboration was needed and Wellcome agreed to fund a specialist centre in the UK to make a significant contribution towards a vital first step – sequencing the first whole human genome.
What are genomes and sequencing?
A genome is the complete set of DNA sequences in an organism, such as a human being or a virus, which contains all the information an organism needs to function, for example how to grow or heal.
Sequencing a genome means reading and recording all of this information, which is represented by sequences of four letters. In a human, there are around three billion pairs of sequences.
1990s
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Centre, as it was initially called, was created. It was the only British organisation involved in the Human Genome Project – the largest international collaboration ever undertaken in biology, involving thousands of scientists across the globe.
The initial aim was for the Wellcome Trust Sanger Centre to sequence one-sixth of the human genome. When a private competitor to the Human Genome Project planned to patent key genes, Wellcome increased investment to help the centre take on more of the sequencing work, speed up progress and ensure the results would be fully and freely accessible to all scientists.
One-third of the first complete human genome was sequenced at the centre – the biggest single contribution to the project.
2000s onwards
The Human Genome Project opened a door to a whole new way of understanding and studying the human body and life on earth including:
- how they have evolved
- how they work
- how they go wrong and what can be done about it
With completion of the Human Genome Project on the horizon, Wellcome established long-term core funding for the Wellcome Sanger Institute. This ensured its resources and capabilities for sequencing, analysing and sharing genomic discoveries could be used to explore this new world and uncover more insights that could benefit humanity.
How the Wellcome Sanger Institute works
The Wellcome Sanger Institute is able to operate at a scale that few other organisations can, and support and lead long-term global thinking in genomic science. It works to achieve its aims through:
- Conducting foundational discovery research into the genomes of humans and other life on earth to answer important questions about health, disease and conservation.
- Translating results into real world change, for example by:
- generating, analysing and openly sharing data on a unique scale
- supporting and spinning out new businesses
- engaging with and influencing policy makers
- providing world-class training for scientists and specialists
- building capacity in the UK and in low- and middle-income countries
- collaborating with industry, where appropriate
How genomic research at the Wellcome Sanger Institute has impacted human health
The Wellcome Sanger Institute has helped to transform how humanity understands, investigates and diagnoses diseases and disorders, leading to improvements in predicting, treating and preventing them.
The institute has also generated and shared significant advances in genome sequencing technology – now a whole genome can be sequenced in minutes instead of years. It has created multiple spin out companies to take developments out into the real world, trained more than 1,400 scientists and specialists, and helped build genomic research capacity all over the world.
Reaching beyond the world of genomic science, the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the Human Genome Project defined a new blueprint for modern life sciences research, establishing the principles of collaboration and open access sharing of data that could benefit all of humanity.
Explore the timeline to discover some of the transformative impacts the Wellcome Sanger Institute has had on human health and biology
Tuberculosis bacterium is sequenced – the first of many pathogens. This offers new strategies for diagnosing, preventing and treating tuberculosis.
The institute began using early versions of new sequencing technologies – the volume of data that could be processed rapidly increased.
The first results are released from the UK-US collaboration on Cancer Drug Sensitivity. The findings of the project go on to support more effective use of cancer treatments and lead to new drug trials and further research.
The African genome variation project, part of H3Africa (Human Heredity and Health in Africa), launched. It aims to characterise the vast genetic diversity in Africa to help understand human origins and disease patterns unique to Africa.
Mosaic TX, the institute's sixth spin out company, launched to develop the next generation of cancer therapeutics, building on 15 years of work developing the core technology.
Sixty new childhood developmental disorders are identified, giving families long-awaited diagnoses and, for many, vital information to adjust treatment plans or the confidence to plan further pregnancies.
What the Wellcome Sanger Institute wants to achieve next
The institute will continue to use and develop genomic technologies at scale to shed new light on our understanding of biology and improve human health. They will do this by studying how diseases start and develop, and seeking better ways to prevent and manage them.
It is also expanding its mission into evolutionary biology, the Earth’s living environment and synthetic genomics.
Synthetic genomics is a young but exciting field focused on building new genomes or chromosomes or changing existing ones. These can be used to create new cells or change how they work, for example altering what or how much of a substance they produce. Where cells are used in the production of drugs, this could increase efficiency. It could also lead to new ways of generating other important chemicals.
Examples of Wellcome Sanger Institute projects
The institute is collaborating on the Darwin Tree of Life project – a bid to sequence the genomes of 70,000 species. The aim is to explore the biology of organisms and ecosystems, support conservation and provide new tools for medicine and biotechnology. It is one of several initiatives across the globe working towards sequencing all complex life on earth.
The Human Cell Atlas is a global, multi-year effort to create reference maps of all the cell types in the human body. The results could have multiple profound impacts such as transforming how we diagnose, monitor and treat diseases or providing information to help generate cells for clinical therapy, like stem cells or bone marrow transplants. A cell atlas for the lung is already shedding light on lung-related diseases like asthma and fibrosis.
There is a significant lack of diversity in genetic data – the vast majority is from European populations and this is holding back progress on understanding and tackling many serious health challenges.
H3Africa was set up to study the genomics and medical genetics of African people. African researchers are establishing and nurturing collaborations in Africa, becoming competitive in genomic sciences and generating unique data to improve both African and global health – for example, a project to understand and combat malaria using genomics.
The Wellcome Sanger Institute and Wellcome are looking to the future and new opportunities presented by genomics research over the coming 25 years. They are leading a series of workshops covering subjects such as, understanding and sustaining life on Earth, and innovative technologies for understanding and engineering life.
