The rise - and fall? - of the NIMR | The Scientist Magazine®

Britain's science community has never seen anything quite like it. The Medical Research Council (MRC) is caught up in a damaging public row over the future of the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), one of its flagship institutions.MRC leaders think that the NIMR, which employs 700 people and has an annual budget of £27 million, should move into central London and merge with an existing university. The staff is furious that staying in the current location isn't being considered as an option. And now claims have surfaced that MRC chief executive Colin Blakemore threatened to fire a key NIMR scientist unless he agreed to the relocation plans – a charge Blakemore has angrily denied. The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee is conducting an inquiry into how the whole affair has been handled.It's not the first time the MRC has considered moving the facility, Blakemore points out. In the mid-1980s, the MRC abandoned plans to move the institute to nearby Harrow in north London "because of the difficulty of dealing with NIMR staff," he says. "It was concluded that perhaps there was another 20 years left in the Mill Hill building. So we are right back there again. This is not a sudden flash in the pan."But as the dispute drags on, potentially taking the future reputation of the NIMR with it, it's worth recalling some of the institute's major scientific achievements. The institute moved to its current location in 1950, but had become well known before that, because it was the first institute created by the MRC. Some highlights include:1929 - Patrick Laidlaw discovers dog distemper virus.1933 - Christopher Andrewes, Wilson Smith, and Laidlaw discover human influenza virus.1936 - Henry Hallett Dale, director of the institute, awarded the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for the discovery of acetylcholine.1947 - World Influenza Centre inaugurated at NIMR.1949 - Audrey Smith publishes pioneering work on cryopreservation of sperm.1952 - Archer J.P. Martin jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for development of liquid and gas chromatography.1953 - High-altitude physiology researcher Lewis Griffith Cresswell Evans Pugh advises Mount Everest expedition.1957 - Alick Isaacs discovers interferon.1967 - N. Avrion Mitchison discovers that lymphocytes of different types cooperate in the immune system.1975 - Robin Valentine elucidates structure of advenovirus.1985 - Colin Sanderson discovers interleukin-5.1991 - Robin Lovell-Badge and Peter Good-fellow discover the sex-determining gene.1996 - Richard Festenstein and Dimitris Kioussis discover that a locus-control region is capable of preventing position effect variegation in T-cell development.Jim Smith, now director of the Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology in Cambridge, recalls the words of a fellow NIMR colleague just before he began at Mill Hill in 1984. "He said, 'Jim, if you can't succeed at Mill Hill you won't succeed anywhere.' And he was right, because it was such a terrific place to do high-quality science," Smith says. "From my time in developmental biology, I can say it was one of the best places in the world."Its secret at the time, Smith believes, was the synergy between different groups of scientists working on different species but all in similar areas of biology. "In the field of developmental biology, it was fantastically strong at the time. But the success of the place goes beyond that," he says.Blakemore believes the institute's status may actually be an obstacle to progress. "The NIMR was originally the sole site for MRC activities. I think it's difficult for the institute to see beyond that status to a situation where it is no longer the only place where the MRC does its research."

The rise - and fall? - of the NIMR

Britain's science community has never seen anything quite like it.

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