BSCB Newsletter, Winter 2011

The Francis Crick Institute: A new dawn for biomedical research in London?

Behind the British library, diggers have recently taken the first stabs towards construction of the Francis Crick Institute. Upon completion in 2015, central London will be home to the biggest biomedical research facility in Europe, slightly larger than EMBL in Heidelberg. In many ways, The Crick is a bold experiment in science policy. It inevitably stimulates both excitement and anxiety.

The Crick's ambition and structure is a far cry from the initial plans of the MRC to relocate and scale down its largest institute, the NIMR. It is an ambitious project driven by four distinct founding partners, the MRC, CRUK, the Wellcome Trust and UCL. Its funding model is unusual in that the money contributed by the various partners will be pooled together at the top, giving generous core funding to each lab (to be supplemented by grants). The institute will be managed as a standalone organisation with minimal interference from its funders. This arrangement is expected to foster a spirit of collaboration that is difficult to achieve in places where funding is balkanised. Indeed the main aim of the institute is to foster exchanges between diverse disciplines and thus create unexpected connections and research directions.

Although translation is an important aspect of The Crick's mission, it is clear that basic research, including cell biology, will feature heavily in its portfolio. The unashamed ambition of Paul Nurse, the director and chief executive, is to make The Crick one of the most innovative interdisciplinary research institutes in the world. The size of the institute and its location are central to this aim. The large size is necessary to bring together the diverse disciplines, including maths, physics and chemistry that are required to tackle modern biomedical problems. The cosmopolitan nature of London will be an attraction for scientists from around the world and the transport hubs around The Crick will facilitate interactions with scientists from the rest of the UK and beyond. 

The potential of The Crick as a research powerhouse is clearly generating excitement in many quarters. However, The Crick is also cause for anxiety at various levels. The institute will cost 600 million pounds to build and kit out. One might wonder whether it is right to spend that much money at a time when research funding is getting tight and when project grants are being discontinued by the Wellcome Trust.  The Crick's management would argue that a portion of this money will come from new sources. Moreover, The Crick is committed to interact with and support research across the UK. Nevertheless, it will be important that individual scientists outside London become convinced that their own research will not suffer. There is also some anxiety among scientists currently working within institutes of the founding organisations, CRUK's London Research Institute (LRI) and the MRC's National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR). Some worry that there might not be enough space to house everybody along with new hires and groups from UCL, the Wellcome Trust and the two belated partners, Imperial College and Kings College. The allocation of space is currently under discussion and the exact composition of The Crick will begin to take shape during the coming academic year.

The proposed career structure at The Crick has also sparked a fierce debate. All groups will be given a 6+6 years-and-then-you-are-out contract. Only a few senior scientists will be hired and not necessarily from the junior ranks. There is no doubt that renewal is important for the dynamism of any institute but we will only find out over time whether a strict renewal policy will provide the stability needed for long term risky research. Time will also tell whether contracts of strict duration will be an issue for applicants who want to ensure geographical stability for their families.

If funds were plentiful, no one would question the benefits of spending new money to reorganise and renew the research infrastructure in the London area. However, in the current climate, questions about the need for the Francis Crick institute will probably continue to be voiced for some time to come. For scientists across the UK to accept that The Crick is a risk worth taking, they will need to be convinced that it will not jeopardise, but instead benefit, their own research. Hopefully this will occur when The Crick reaches steady state and the funding situation improves.

"If you don't risk anything you risk even more"
Erica Jong

Further details can be found on www.crick.ac.uk

Jean-Paul Vincent,
MRC National Institute for Medical Research