Examination of Witnesses (Questions 455-459)
PROFESSOR MALCOLM
GRANT CBE AND
PROFESSOR MIKE
SPYER
24 JANUARY 2007
Q455 Chairman: Could I welcome our two
witnesses for the second of our sessions this morning, Professor
Malcolm Grant, the President and Provost of UCL, and Professor
Mike Spyer, Vice Provost, Biomedicine and Dean of the Medical
School of UCL. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming, and
thank you for coming at such short notice, we certainly appreciate
that. I am very sorry about how cold it is in this room, but the
House of Commons is trying to cut down on its energy use here
in order to show an example. The reality is we do not know how
the heating works! We were very anxious when we started our inquiry
in terms of research council institutes, which was prompted in
some ways by the former Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury, advocating
the embedding of institutes within universities. It came at a
time when there was obviously concern over the future of NIMR
and also the future of the CEH institutes with NERC where there
is a major reorganisation going on there. We wanted to test the
thesis with you this morning about what are the advantages of
having major national research institutes embedded in universities.
You have been very supportive of the move for the development
of NIMR within UCL, and we wondered why do you want to get involved
in this project? Why is it so important to your university?
Professor Grant:
First of all, Chairman, thank you and to you the Members of the
Committee for inviting us to talk to you this morning. The answer
to your question is a complex one. As you know, we are a major
multi-faculty institution with research strength right across
the whole of the social sciences, arts and humanities, as well
as in physical sciences, engineering, and biomedicine, but the
biomedicine and lifescience's end of UCL accounts for about 65%
of our budget; it is an extraordinarily important area of activity.
From the UCL perspective, one of the huge advantages of our present
structure is the close relationship we have with partner hospitals.
There is, for example, the new UCL hospital immediately opposite
us in Gower Street, but, beyond that, very close partnerships
with integrated scientific activity occurring at the National
Neurological and Neurosurgery Hospital in Queen Square, at Great
Ormond Street, where there is the UCL Institute of Child Health,
at Moorfields in ophthalmology, but also at the Royal Free, the
Whittington, and at Stanmore, so there is an accumulation of clinical
services quite closely integrated with UCL basic and applied sciences.
Perhaps the most remarkable model is what you will see principally
in neurology and child health where there is a close inter-relationship
between the clinicians, the clinical scientists and the basic
scientists, almost a virtuous circle in which the problem, as
perceived from the clinicians' point of view, is analysed with
the scientists, taken back to the laboratory for basic science,
perhaps some modelling, some clinical trials, and then brought
back into translation at the bedside. That, when it works best,
is almost seamless, and there could be no more compelling model
of the way in which discovery is translated into health improvement
and ultimately, if it is appropriate, into economic benefit. What
we saw when we were approached by the MRC and invited to bid for
the co-location with us of NIMR was a real opportunity to develop
in this central site in London, where most of the activity I have
just mentioned to you is within 15 minutes' walk of the central
point of our campus, one of this nation's and one of the world's
leading medical research institutes. That brings to us not just
the glamour and prestige of having NIMR co-located with us, because
that is not an entirely costless operation, but a huge advantage,
we think, for strengthening both UCL and the institute by co-locating;
co-locating not necessarily by building an accumulation of expertise,
let us say, in developmental biology, but co-locating by allowing
scientists within NIMR to interact with, for example, engineers
or computational neuroscientists, or with economists at UCL. The
opportunities for these interactions are much enhanced by co-location,
building on what is already a strong interactive and collaborative
relationship which we have with NIMR.
Q456 Chairman: If NIMR in its current
guise was taken from Mill Hill and planted on the Temperence Hospital
site, would that meet your requirements?
Professor Grant: No, it would
not. From the beginning we have been very clear that it would
be a mistake simply to uplift the whole of the Mill Hill enterprise
and relocate it in a single building which would be, as it were,
a different silo. From our perspective, the whole point of the
co-location would be for a much better integration of the science.
For that reason we decided from the outset that we would co-invest
with MRC. I have to stress, this is an MRC project to invest in
the renewal of one of its institutes and to do so by co-locating
it with a multidisciplinary university. We wish to co-invest in
that. We cannot fund the MRC, but we can co-invest by taking an
option of space in that building, perhaps providing space elsewhere
on the UCL campus and then cross-appointing scientists to posts
within UCL departments and cross-appointing UCL academic staff
to be co-located within or beside NIMR activity. Without denting
the position of NIMR as a national institute, we can get a functional
collaboration which would be much more powerful, we would argue,
than presently we are able to achieve.
Q457 Chairman: It has been argued
that you could achieve the same objective by leaving NIMR where
it is at Mill Hill by, in fact, developing the university on that
campus so that you had all those opportunities within three-quarters
of an hour of Central London by developing that as a vision. Would
that work for you?
Professor Grant: Put in those
simple terms, no. One could imagine a model in which, if Mill
Hill were to be retained in some form, there might be a more open
bidirectional flow of activity. We are quite concerned not to
disturb too much the powerful impact of the concentration that
we have got in Bloomsbury of high quality scientific activity.
The model we have been discussing, which has been proposed by
the MRC, from the beginning has been a model of co-locating the
whole of the institute with us. We would be open to discussions
about alternative ways of approaching it. One could envisage,
for example, that part of our enterprise activity and other non-translational
science activity might be located at Mill Hill and there might
be a flow between the two, but this is still something which we
have not fully applied our thoughts to because it has not come
through as an MRC proposal to us.
Professor Spyer: I just wanted
to add one point because I think Professor Grant has answered
the particular question very well, but I think it would break
down to some degree the link between the basic science and the
clinical environment, which I think is a very crucial element
of what Professor Grant has described of the strength of the relationship
within, let us call it, the Bloomsbury environment at the moment
because I think a three-quarters of an hour/one hour translocation
to an institute based out at Mill Hill would mean that one would
not get the easy involvement of clinical scientists and clinicians
being able to wander in when they have got half an hour or an
hour between doing certain day-to-day activities, and I think
one of the ideas behind the move, most certainly in developing
the plan as a member of the project board, has been to provide
an environment within the new NIMR where it will be exceedingly
easy for clinicians and natural scientists, other scientists and
humanitists from around the UCL campus to easily interact in their
day-to-day activities.
Q458 Chairman: With respect, Professor
Spyer, if you look at the translational research that goes on
at the moment at the Stanmore and Whittington sites, they are
a significant distance from UCL and yet they are successful, are
they not?
Professor Spyer: They are successful
but I would think in many ways they are not as successful as they
would be were they within the environment of Bloomsbury, and indeed
we are already looking at ways in which for example many components
of the Institute of Orthopaedics might relocate to the centre
of UCL because of the problems of facilitating and maintaining
the relationship between mechanical engineering and orthopaedic
research, so I think there are problems of distance in terms of
maintaining relationships.
Q459 Chairman: It is just that in
terms of critical mass clearly we heard from Sir David Cooksey
earlier in terms of a critical mass that was required in order
to make the basic and translational research actually sit together
and be meaningful, and it seems to me that there has to be a critical
mass here in order to make this work and whether in fact we have
got the necessary critical mass and whether the site is capable
of doing that. What is your view on the size which is required
in order to make this a successful venture at UCL that we are
talking about?
Professor Spyer: In very broad
terms, at the moment the National Institute of Medical Research
is about 700 scientists, I think. When you look internationally
at multi inter-disciplinary research centres it is very much at
the low end of that range, but it functions extraordinarily well
and there is no criticism in that comment. I think in the context
of critical mass if those 700 individuals moved to the environment
of University College one is increasing the critical mass in many
of the areas in which the National Institute of Medical Research
is very active really quite considerably by doubling the size
at least of the critical mass, and that is in particular research
domains, for example, developmental biology, infection and immunity,
most certainly in neuroscience. I think the issue that again comes
from the Cooksey Report is the fact of the importance of the relationship
with other disciplines beyond those immediate disciplines that
are part of the immediate research environment. For example, University
College, unlike many institutions over the last decade, has invested
very, very heavily in chemistry and we have particular emphasis
in biological chemistry. Biological chemistry has a real relationship
to one of NIMR's strengths—structural biology. By bringing
biological chemistry into immediate interplay with structural
biology, the critical mass in essence for research is going to
be elevated dramatically, and that is just one example.
|
