One year ago, on 1 April 2015, the Francis Crick Institute came to life. On this date, we transferred 1,200 staff from two institutes, the London Research Institute and the National Institute for Medical Research, to become official employees of the Crick.

Since that milestone, Crick researchers have won a number of the world's most prestigious scientific awards, including a Nobel Prize for Tomas Lindahl (from our Clare Hall lab), the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine for John Diffley (Clare Hall lab), the Hooke Medal for Thomas Surrey (Lincoln's Inn Fields lab), and the Brain Prize for Timothy Bliss (Mill Hill lab).

These awards were in recognition of the outstanding research carried out previously in our legacy institutes. In the last 12 months, we have also seen many Crick researchers continuing to break scientific boundaries:

  • In a science first, Dr Kathy Niakan received approval from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to use a genome editing technique called CRISPR in human embryos in order to explore the very earliest stage of human development.
  • Professor Charles Swanton published a key discovery into the genetic makeup of tumours that has the potential to aid the development of personalised cancer immunotherapy.
  • Dr Peter Cherepanov, leading an international team, discovered important new detail on how retroviruses - such as HIV - take over healthy cells.
  • Professor Mike Blackman discovered that malarial parasites need a protein calls MSP1 to burst from red blood cells and infects new ones. The discovery solves the long-standing question of how parasites escape and provides a new target for anti-malarial drugs.

These examples are just a few of the research developments during the year: in total, Crick researchers have published over more than 300 primary research papers since April 2015.

One of the Crick's strategic priorities is to ensure that our discoveries are translated as quickly as possible into benefits for human health. In the last year, we have created a translation department and have already launched our first translation projects, including open science collaborations with GSK and AstraZeneca.

Of course, none of these scientific achievements would be possible without all our support staff, who have been working hard over the last year to ensure a smooth transition for scientific staff, as well as preparing for our move into the new building later this year.

Developing a brand new biomedical research institute is a massive undertaking. The Crick Lab, our new building, is more complex than the Shard and has more rooms than Buckingham Palace, and it has required skilled architects, engineers and construction workers, acting in partnership with our own staff, to make the vision a reality.

While the construction has been underway, we have also had to plan the logistics of moving science and operations from four sites into one. This planning needs to take into account the timelines of existing experiments as well as the safe and timely relocation or acquisition of large, complex scientific equipment and everything else that allows science to happen.

Despite the incredible complexity of planning around this, we are making good progress. The finishing touches are being put to the building, and we should receive the keys in June, so that we can start to move in July. Migrating more than 1,250 staff will take a considerable amount of time but we expect the first scientists will be working at their lab benches by late summer and that everyone will be in by early 2017.

Before the doors have even opened, however, the building has already won an award. We received the 2016 London First Investment in London's Future Award for "a visionary regeneration or development which reinforces London's competitiveness in the long term".

We have also welcomed many new faces the Crick in the last 12 months. A total of 19 Crick-university attachments have been selected, which includes six secondments, 10 satellite groups and three sabbaticals. This means around 60 employees from our three university partners will be moving into the new building this year.

We will have 44 PhD studentships available from September and our graduate student recruitment is well underway. We received more than 1,300 applications and 132 applicants were invited to interview at the end of January.

Looking ahead to the next 12 months, we still have a huge amount to achieve as we move into our new building. There are so many exciting scientific opportunities and we look forward to sharing our research findings with you in the future. 

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