£38m for 'game-changing' centre
We’ve been awarded £38m to create a global centre of excellence for Precision Medicine, focused on translating science and innovation into a real-world clinical setting.
The Precision Medicine Living Lab will be led by the same UofG team who set up the rapid response Lighthouse Lab COVID-19 testing facility in Glasgow. The facility will have unparalleled interactions between academia, industry and the health service.
It will also address the biggest challenge currently facing Precision Medicine: the translation of research innovation into clinical practice for the benefit of patients. Precision Medicine is the tailoring of medical treatments to each patient’s characteristics, ultimately helping to treat people quickly and more effectively, and avoiding unnecessary side effects from drugs that won’t work. Precision Medicine is made possible by using cutting-edge medical tools such as more precise diagnostics, imaging, genomics and artificial intelligence.
The Living Lab will offer growing space and support infrastructure for the development of Precision Medicine-based health innovations so they can go from lab to health service. It will help to support companies to develop and commercialise as well as encourage business start-ups, while offering the NHS substantial savings by implementing Precision Medicine in the UK’s largest hospital.
Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak is Scotland’s leading expert on Precision Medicine: “The Living Lab will offer a game-changing opportunity to bring a dynamic collective of industry, academia and the NHS together to work on research and development opportunities that will have potential and implications for the NHS and ultimately patients.”
The University has already created the Clinical Innovation Zone – a unique space in Scotland where industry, academia and the NHS work alongside each other on Precision Medicine projects. Both the Clinical Innovation Zone and the Living Lab will form key nodes of the University-led Glasgow Riverside Innovation District, which aims to offer an opportunity to reimagine Glasgow’s proud industrial heritage for the 21st century and establish Glasgow’s leadership in the high-tech industries of the future.
Photo: The Living Lab project will establish a new life sciences cluster around the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Govan.
Professor Dame Anna Dominiczak has very successfully led the establishment of the Glasgow Lighthouse Lab at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, which is a key element of the NHS Test & Trace Programme. The lab has gone from strength to strength in developing its testing capacity, with the support of many colleagues at the University. Dame Anna’s leadership of the project has been recognised by the UK Government, who has asked her to lead the work across all the UK Lighthouse Laboratories.
Given the importance of the role which she has been asked to perform, the University has agreed to second Dame Anna to the NHS Test & Trace Programme. She will continue concurrently her roles as the Regius Chair of Medicine, the Principal Investigator on the Strength in Places Living Lab project, the lead for the Lighthouse Lab in Glasgow and the MRC Health Innovation Champion.
“The request from UK Government to take up this important secondment is testament to the national leadership which she provides in biomedicine, and she takes up this new challenge at a crucial time for the country as it seeks to deal with the pandemic going into the autumn and winter months,” says Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli.
Professor Iain McInnes CBE will succeed Dame Anna as Vice Principal and Head of the College of MVLS. Iain, a world-renowned arthritis expert, is currently Director of the University's Institute for Infection, Immunity and Inflammation.