Babraham Institute
Formation | 1948 |
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Location |
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Director | Simon Cook |
Key people |
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Affiliations | |
Staff | ~350 |
Website | www |
Formerly called |
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The Babraham Institute is a life sciences research institution focussing on healthy ageing. The Babraham Institute is based on the Babraham Research Campus, partly occupying a former manor house, but also laboratory and science facility buildings on the campus, surrounded by an extensive parkland estate, just south of Cambridge, England. It is an independent and charitable organization which is involved in biomedical research, including healthy aging and molecular biology. The director is Dr Simon Cook who also leads the Institute's signalling research programme.
The Babraham Institute is a member of EU-LIFE, an alliance of leading life sciences research centres in Europe.[1] It is also a partner organisation of the University of Cambridge
History
The institute is located on the historic Babraham Hall Estate (now called the Babraham Research Campus), situated six miles south-east of
A department of biochemistry was established in 1954 by
In 1986, The Institute of Animal Physiology was joined with two Scottish institutes based at Roslin, The Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO) and the Poultry Research Centre, to form The Institute of Animal Physiology and Genetics Research (IAPGR) funded by the Agricultural and Food Research Council (AFRC). In 1993, Roslin and Babraham formed two separate institutes, at which time the Babraham Institute assumed its current name. in 1994, The AFRC was disbanded and The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) was formed. All work with direct relevance to agriculture ceased in 1998.
Research
The aim of the research conducted at The Babraham Institute is to study the molecular mechanisms that underlie normal cellular processes and functions, and to understand how these systems are affected by age. The Institute's work also covers how faults or abnormalities in these systems may contribute to disease. The Institute has the status of a postgraduate department within the
- Signalling (headed by Simon Cook): focuses on proteins that play a critical role in controlling communication between and within cells. These proteins make up the signalling pathwaysthat organise how cells and organs develop and react to their environment.
- Immunology (headed by Martin Turner): investigates signal transduction pathways that regulate the survival and activation of lymphocytes.
- Epigenetics (headed by Gavin Kelsey): studies how epigenetic information is introduced into the genome during early development of an organism, which can in part depend on environmental or nutritional factors acting through cell signalling pathways.
Research breakthroughs made at the Babraham Institute include the discovery of
Many of its past and current employees were elected fellows of the
Babraham Institute Enterprise Ltd (BIE),[8] the wholly owned trading subsidiary of the Babraham Institute promotes knowledge transfer and translation of the Institute’s research discoveries, actively managing and exploiting the Institute’s intellectual property, promoting and negotiating commercial research partnerships and establishing spin-out companies when appropriate.
Funding
The Institute's research programmes are primarily supported by Institute Strategic Programme Grants (ISPGs) awarded by the
Directors
- 1949-1958 Ivan de Burgh Daly CBE, FRS
- 1958-1965 Sir John Henry Gaddum FRS
- 1965-1972 Richard Darwin KeynesCBE, FRS
- 1973-1989 Sir Barry Albert Cross CBE, FRS
- 1989-1993 Sir Robert Brian Heap CBE, FRS
- 1994-2005 Richard Dyer OBE
- 2005-2007 John Bicknell (acting director)
- 2007–2020 Michael J O Wakelam
- 2020-2021 Wolf Reik FRS (acting and then permanent director)
- 2021- 2022 Simon Cook (interim director)
- 2022- Simon Cook (director)
References
- ^ "Our members". EU-LIFE.
- ^ "Details 1132". Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 8 January 2016.
- .
- ^ Donald William Butcher (1954) A Short History of Babraham Hall and the Babraham Estate. ASIN: B000WRZKK6
- PMID 5859039.
- ^ Berridge MJ and Irvine RF (1984) Inositol trisphosphate, a novel second messenger in cellular signal transduction. Nature 312, 315 - 321
- doi:10.1038/328248a0.
- ^ "Babraham Institute Enterprise Ltd - Babraham Research Campus, Babraham, Cambridge, United Kingdom". Retrieved 31 August 2011.