Establishing MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre, a world leading high-throughput metabolic phenotyping centre for humanpopulation disease-risk biomarker discovery.
Description: We are setting up a new national centre to examine tens of thousands of human blood, and urine samples for the huge variety of chemicals that are found in our bodies. Some of those chemicals are made by ourselves and others originate from our diet, medicines and even pollutants.
The purpose of doing this is to link the chemicals that we find in our bodies to different disease risk factors and to improve their prevention, diagnosis and treatment. This work will help us to understand the complexity of health and disease and will enhance our understanding of the interactions between peoples' genes, their lifestyle and their environment. This work will help us develop ways to make sure that everyone gets exactly the right treatment they need depending on their own genetics, lifestyle and other conditions they may have.
Measuring the tiny quantities of these compounds requires expert researchers and highly specialised equipment. It also requires sophisticated statistical and computer analysis to identify which of the many thousands chemicals are the most important predictors of disease. The Centre will build on existing expertise and infrastructure at Imperial and will enable us to make it available to others. We are working with other scientsits at King's College London, and experts from the equipment companies to set up the new centre, which will give all researchers in the UK access to these state-of-the-art facilities and expert scientists, and will train new researchers for the future.
This new centre is the first such facility in the world that can do parallel high throughput analysis of samples on this scale and will lead the way in setting standards for other countries that are setting up similar centres. The research that is undertaken in the centre will also help develop the technologies to be more cost effective and environmentally friendly.
By establishing this national centre, Imperial will be able to build on its world-leading expertise and work with other researchers to investigate a wider range of diseases and disease risks, and will speed up developments in their treatment, diagnosis and prevention.
Funder: Medical Research Council
Funding type: intramural
Start date: 2012-12-01
End date: 2018-11-30
Funded outputs count: 128
Funder award ID: MC_PC_12025
OpenAlex ID: G3164137681