Our history

The front facade of the Crick.

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We are a unique partnership between six of the world's leading biomedical research organisations: the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and King's College London.

The project to create the Crick was launched in 2007 in response to the Cooksey Report, an independent review of arrangements for funding health research in the UK.

In the summer of 2011, with a pioneering scientific vision in place and the foundations of a state-of-the-art building about to be laid, the project was named the Francis Crick Institute, acknowledging the scientific achievements of one of Britain's most notable scientists, Dr Francis Crick.

The Crick began operating in April 2015 when the MRC's National Institute for Medical Research and CRUK's London Research Institute (at Lincoln's Inn Fields and Clare Hall) merged. 

The institute was officially opened by The Queen in November 2016 and was fully operational by the spring of 2017.

Today the Crick houses over 2000 people and more than 100 research groups. Research groups from NIMR and LRI have been joined by groups seconded from our partner universities and by a significant number of new group leader recruits.

Our founding institutes

The Crick has built upon the long history of research at the MRC's National Institute for Medical Research and CRUK's London Research Institute.

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