To launch the Medical Research Council (MRC) centenary celebrations, its chief executive Sir John Savill, gave an inspirational presentation on the history and past achievements of this fabulous organisation that has thus far supported the work that has lead to 29 Nobel prizes. Highlights of MRC supported work over the last century include:

1916: Rickets caused by lack of vitamin D (Sir Edward Mellanby)



1940s: Development of penicillin as a drug (Sir Alexander Fleming Sir Ernst Chain and Lord Florey)



1940s: Randomised controlled trials for tuberculosis (Austin Bradford-Hill and Philip D'Arcy Hart)

1946: The first cohort study (The MRC National Survey of Health and Development study has followed the lives of a group of people born in one particular week in 1946)

1953: Discovery of the structure of DNA (James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin)

1956: Smoking causes cancer (Sir Richard Doll and Sir Austin Bradford Hill)

1970s: Clinical trials of chemotherapy for leukaemia (The success of these studies was particularly dramatic in children, increasing the survival rate from around one in five to around four in five)

1973: MRI invented (Sir Peter Mansfield)



1980s onwards: Vaccination in The Gambia Vaccination programmes introduced to The Gambia since the 1980s have reduced childhood mortality six-fold

1991: Folic acid cuts risk of spina bifida (A nine-year-long MRC clinical trial showed that giving pregnant women folic acid reduces the risk of major birth defects of the brain and spine

2010: Bowel screening test developed (The flexi-scope bowel cancer screening test for the over 65s allows doctors to both detect early stages of bowel cancer and remove precancerous polyps to prevent bowel cancer. Developed with MRC and Cancer Research UK funding, the test is expected to save 3,000 lives each year in the UK alone)

Sir John also discussed the importance of the MRC-PPU's own Division of Signal Transduction Therapy Unit (DSTT) as a model of how academic groups can interact with pharmaceutical companies in order to accelerate drug discovery.

Sir John then looked forward and speculated what the next 100 years might bring. He predicted that 'we're going to have a much more sophisticated understanding of the links between nature and nurture and the interplay between a person's genetic make-up and their environment and lifestyle. Once we know more about this interaction between genome and exposome, we will have a far better understanding of the risk factors that make us more or less likely to develop a disease, allowing us to make more choices that promote health.' Other well-known researchers predicted breakthroughs in individualisation of therapy, tissue regeneration, advances in synthetic biology as well as revolutionary cures for infectious diseases, Alzheimer and all cancers! If this is all achieved will we still need a Medical Research Council in 100 years time?

In a very lively question and answer session Sir John discussed the future of the MRC with PPU staff.

MRC-PPU Director Dario Alessi reflected that most of the ~160 members of staff of the Unit would not be working in Dundee had it not been for the generous long-term support that the Unit has received from the MRC spanning nearly 24 years. Over this period MRC support has enabled training of over 100 PhD students, 300 postdocs, and provided tremendous employment opportunities for many talented support staff. This has greatly contributed to our understanding of how signal transduction pathways are organised and function and how disruptions in these networks results in diseases such as cancer, immune disorders and neurodegeneration. Most of the researchers who have worked in our Unit have gone on to highly successful careers all over the world that include starting companies, running major research institutes and laboratories, working in pharmaceutical companies as well as undertaking senior administrative roles.