King’s gets £4M for neuroscience, MRC transplant centre

King’s College London will receive £4 million from The Wolfson Foundation for the King’s Clinical Neuroscience Institute (KCNI), a new site of collaboration on neurological disorders such as epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. The university has also been awarded a new Medical Research Council Centre for Transplantation to improve donor quality and research alternative donor sources.   

The KCNI will aim to deepen understanding in order to treat neurological diseases including strokes and Parkinson’s disease, which risk increasing due to population ageing. The pledge from The Wolfson Foundation, which supports science and technology projects through a £35 million per annum fund, will part-fund, along with the King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, the 3,600 metres-squared neuroscience institute comprising teaching and laboratory space costing a total of £26 million. 

The new MRC for Transplantation, directed by Professor Steven Sacks, will be the fifth MRC at King’s.  Research aims to tackle ongoing transplantation problems such as shortage of donor organs and donor rejection.  By joining the efforts of biology and transplant experts in the fields of immunology, stem cell biology, genomics and imaging, the centre will focus research on achieving rapid and effective diagnosis and treatment, as well as providing training and education, and studying the regulation and ethics of transplantation research.