Strategic partnerships

In August 2020, the Crick and our neighbour, the Alan Turing Institute, entered into a partnership to increase data-centric biomedical science research collaborations.

The partnership aims to create a new culture of integrating big data analytics with biology to boost progress in biomedical research through targeted research activities, talent development and public engagement.

One major stream of the partnership are the Crick-Turing Biomedical Data Science Awards. These 12-month projects enable early-career data scientists on secondment to the Turing from a range of universities such as Imperial College London, and the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester to work with biomedical data generated by Crick scientists.

The partnership builds on interactions between the Crick and the Alan Turing Institute, including Data Science x Biomedical Science Summer School and KQ Labs, a data-driven health accelerator programme. 

In 2019, the Crick along with IST Austria, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, the Rockefeller University and the Weizmann Institute of Science established the BRIDGE (Basic Research Institutions Delivering Graduate Education) Network, a global group of institutes that combine leading research with PhD student training.

The network aims to advocate common values, in particular excellence in research and graduate education, internationality, research ethics, responsible leadership and mentorship, autonomy, openness and diversity alongside promoting successful organisational models for research and graduate education.

The Crick African Network is a fellowship programme that trains African researchers to tackle the health challenges in their home countries by sharing the Crick's experience in researching infectious diseases, including HIV, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. The network is supported by a £6.8m grant through UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) that delivers up to 18 African Career Accelerator awards over the course of three years. Each individual award has a duration of up to two years, with fellows spending time between the Crick and one of the five African partner institutes.

The network is led by Crick group leader Jean Langhorne, with five African partner institutes: the West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP) at the University of Ghana; Stellenbosch University; the University of Cape Town; MRC Unit The Gambia at LSHTM; and MRC/UVRI and LSHTM Uganda Research Unit.

We’re one of the founding partners of the Cancer Research UK City of London Centre, a new hub for cancer biotherapeutics.

The centre brings together cancer researchers from the Crick, UCL, King’s College London and Barts/Queen Mary University of London to develop innovative cancer treatments, as well as diagnosis and stratification techniques. 

By combining expertise from each partner institution including specialists in imaging, clinical trials and tumour evolution, the centre works on all cancer types and has a specific focus on childhood cancers. The centre also offers multidisciplinary cancer-based PhD projects and clinical fellowships as part of their training programme. 

In January 2021, we became one of three UK organisations – along with the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the University of Dundee – to join the Leap Health Breakthrough Network, a global group of 21 leading academic and research institutions committed to solving the world’s most serious health challenges, such as cancer and infectious diseases.

The Crick is a party to the Leap Master Academic Research Funding Agreement (MARFA), which equitably addresses all terms and conditions, including IP, ownership and publication. This will enable the Crick to swiftly execute research projects should funding be granted.

The Worldwide Influenza Centre at the Crick is one of six centres in the world responsible for analysing influenza viruses circulating in the human population, overseen by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The WHO established the Worldwide Influenza Centre in 1948 at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), now part of the Crick. Scientists at the NIMR were the first to identify the human flu virus in 1933, making it an ideal location for the new centre.

In its current guise, the team monitor flu strains around the world and inform vaccine development, working within the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance and Response System, consisting of over 150 laboratories and institutions worldwide.