UCL in the News: Watching Wolfson

In the 1990s, Moncada had a vision: Create a research environment that was better funded than the average academic institute but with greater freedom from the bottom line than a pharmaceutical company. The phrase "bench to bedside" may now be one of the most threadbare clichés in science, but when the Wolfson was getting off the ground, translational research was a novel idea in British academia, says Moncada. …

In 1995, Moncada was looking for a potential home for his new institute, and he began talking to academic centres about his vision. Early discussions with the government-funded Medical Research Council did not progress, but then he heard that the Cruciform building at UCL was available. …

Now, the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research houses 220 research staff, postgraduate researchers, and related personnel who work in the top four floors of the building. Their research, funded by grants and industry to the tune of £10 million per year, covers cancer and stem cell biology, neuroscience, developmental biology, and mitochondrial and cardiovascular research. …

WIBR also employs a group of medicinal chemists, whose goal is to work with their colleagues to develop drug candidates. Their presence was a key focus for the small team Moncada brought with him from Wellcome. They wanted the institute to offer freedom for researchers to explore their interests, while maximizing the chance that drugs could be developed from their discoveries. …

Today about 25 researchers work in WIBR's fourth-floor chemistry department, many of them trying to identify small-molecule inhibitors of disease pathways identified in labs on other floors. …

"All of us are encouraged by Salvador to foster links with the medicinal chemistry group," says cancer researcher Chris Boshoff. "Most of the groups at the Wolfson keep that in the back of their minds."

Boshoff, a viral oncologist originally from South Africa, is young, sharply dressed, and busy. He's been at UCL for five years, and Moncada and others recently nominated him to head a new cancer institute that will have close ties to the Wolfson - even physically, in the form of a Victorian-era subterranean tunnel that joins the new cancer institute to WIBR.

Boshoff's reserve gives way to enthusiasm as he leads a guided tour of the new facility, a spanking new building of glass, wood, and formed concrete that sits in stark contrast to the century-old Cruciform next door. …

To encourage connections between the two institutes, scientists will share some core facilities such as electron microscopes, cell sorters, and genome analyzers. Indeed, shared facilities have always been another part of Moncada's strategy to encourage interaction between scientists. "I deliberately arranged the space so that central services were distributed unevenly between groups, to force people to move around," he says.

Some might find such an arrangement frustrating, but it's a strategy that works, Boshoff says. "I think the big thing here is the variety. People are so mixed together, you develop collaborations with them just because you get talking." …

In Moncada's own labs, Alexander Galkin, a Russian postdoc who came to London a year ago from Frankfurt, is studying the change in activity of mitochondrial complex I in the presence of nitrosating agents. Sitting in the cubicle next to Galkin is David Unitt, a former physicist from Cambridge University who is using spectroscopy to measure the effect of cellular nitric oxide concentrations on cytochrome functions.

Neither Galkin nor Unitt have been at WIBR much more than a year, but they are both quick to praise its atmosphere. "There are a lot of very committed, clever people who are quite passionate about the work," Unitt says. "Also, it's a big enough institute so you don't feel like you're stuck in a small group."

It's also clear that Moncada himself is content with the way the institute has developed. "My conclusion after the experience of the past 12 years is that it is possible to have an environment that allows the interface between academia and industry without letting money interfere. I would say in general we have been very successful."

Stephen Pincock, 'The Scientist'