New European Research Funding
The IGMM has been successful in obtaining substantial grant funding from the European Union: May 2015
The MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the University of Edinburgh (IGMM) has been successful in obtaining substantial grant funding from the European Union.
IGMM researchers have been awarded, or collaborated in, a total of 11 European grants with a total value of 15.9M Euros (IGMM share of 10.4M Euros) in the last five years.
The most recent successes include Dr Elizabeth Patton, from the MRC Human Genetics Unit, winning a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for her work on the role of the melanocyte lineage in melanoma. These grants support the emergence of the next-generation of research leaders who are at the stage of consolidating their own independent research programme and can contribute new ideas and energy to science.
Three Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships have been awarded to Dr Charlene Lemaitre in the MRC Human Genetics Unit (Bickmore Lab) for work on the role of the cell nucleus in controlling embryonic development, to Dr Belen Rubio-Ruiz in the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre (Unciti-Broceta Lab) for research into the development of biochemically-stable prodrugs whose activation is locally mediated by metallic implants and to Dr Cigdem Selli in the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre (Sims Lab) to analyse the dormant cancer cells from ER+ breast tumours treated with hormonal therapy drug letrozole.
Professor Wendy Bickmore (MRC Human Genetics Unit) is a partner in a pan-European network to train PhD students investigating how the three-dimensional packing of the genome influences how genes work and contributes to disease.
Prestigious Individual EU Research Grants and Fellowships funded through the ERC and Marie Curie schemes are a vital component of IGMM science and are a reflection of the Institute's growing International status. The ERC consolidator award will enable Liz Patton to add a new dimension to her exciting translational programme. Liz joins 5 other ERC grant holders in the IGMM, 3 at advanced level (Wendy Bickmore , Margaret Frame and Tim Aitman) and two with starter grants (Andrew Jackson and Omar Albagha) . The Marie Curie Fellowships attest to the quality of the talented postdoctoral fellows we are fortunate to recruit from across the EU.