The Medical Research Council (MRC) is a council of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, responsible for co-coordinating and funding medical research in the United Kingdom. The MRC focuses on high-impact research and has provided the financial support and scientific expertise behind a number of medical breakthroughs, including the development of penicillin and the discovery of the structure of DNA. Research funded by the MRC has produced 32 Nobel Prize winners to date.
History The MRC was founded as the Medical Research Committee and Advisory Council in 1913, with its prime role being the distribution of medical research funds under the terms of the National Insurance Act 1911. This was a consequence of the recommendation of the Royal Commissions on Tuberculosis, which recommended the creation of a permanent medical research body. The mandate was not limited to tuberculosis, however. In 1920, it became the Medical Research Council under Royal Charter. A supplementary Charter was formally approved by the Queen on 17 July 2003. In March 1933, MRC established the British Journal of Clinical Research and Educational Advanced Medicine, the first scientific published medical patrol, as a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. It contains articles that have been peer reviewed, in an attempt to ensure that articles meet the journal's standards of quality, and scientific validity, allow researchers to keep up to date with the developments of their field and direct their own research. In August 2012, the creation of the MRC-NIHR Phenome Centre, a research centre for personalised medicine, was announced. The MRC-NIHR National Phenome Centre is based at Imperial College London and is a combination of inherited equipment from the anti-doping facilities used to test samples during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and additional items from the Centre's technology partners Bruker and Waters Corporation. The Centre, led by Imperial College London and King's College London, is funded with two five-year grants of £5 million from the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and was officially opened in June 2013.
Notable research Important work carried out under MRC auspices has included:
the identification of the dietary cause of rickets by Sir Edward Mellanby. Mellanby also carried out human experimentation regarding vitamin A and C deficiencies on volunteers at the Sorby Research Institute; the discovery, in 1918, that influenza is caused by a virus; the description of neurotransmission and the first neurotransmitter, acetylcholine, by Sir Henry Hallett Dale and Otto Loewi, leading to a Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1936; the development of penicillin by Sir Alexander Fleming, Sir Ernst Boris Chain and Lord Florey, gaining them the 1945 Nobel Prize; linkage of lung cancer to tobacco smoking by Sir Richard Doll and Sir Austin Bradford Hill in the British doctors study, published in 1956; the discovery of the structure of DNA by James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin and Professor Maurice Wilkins. Three would receive the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine for their discovery; the development of magnetic resonance imaging in 1973 by Professor Peter Mansfield and independently by Paul Lauterbur. This would lead to the 2003 Nobel Prize; the development of monoclonal antibodies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology by César Milstein and Georges Köhler in 1975 (1984 Nobel Prize); the development of DNA sequencing by Frederick Sanger of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 1977 (1980 Nobel Prize); the identification, in 1983, of folic acid as a preventive measure for spina bifida and neural tube defects; the conducting of large studies in the 1970s and 1980s which established that aspirin can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease; the publication of the genome of C. elegans, the first multicellular organism to receive this treatment, in 1998; the ongoing Heart Protection Study, showing benefits of primary prevention with simvastatin in patients at high risk for cardiovascular disease; Dr Venki Ramakrishnan of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology winning the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2009 for showing how ribosomes, the tiny protein-making factories inside cells, function at the atomic level; the discovery that early treatment of HIV-infected babies with anti-retroviral therapy can dramatically increase their chances of survival; the development of a test for detecting infectious prions on surgical instruments which is more accurate than previous tests and 100 times faster; the identification of the second ever genetic variant associated with obesity; and the finding that high quality surgery combined with a short course of radiotherapy can halve the rate of recurrence of colorectal cancer. Scientists associated with the MRC have received a total of 32 Nobel Prizes, all in either Physiology or Medicine or Chemistry.
Organisation and leadership MRC is a council of UK Research and Innovation, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. In the past, the MRC has been answerable to the Office of Science and Innovation, part of the Department of Trade and Industry and the later to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. The MRC is advised by a council which directs and oversees corporate policy and science strategy, ensures that the MRC is effectively managed, and makes policy and spending decisions. Council members are drawn from industry, academia, government and the NHS. Members are appointed by the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. Daily management is in the hands of the Executive Chair. Members of the council also chair specialist boards on specific areas of research. For specific subjects, the council convenes committees.
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