Professor Steve Bloom, investigative science, Hammersmith campus, supervising Imperial's involvement, said: "We hope this project will allow us to develop new and more effective treatments to tackle the spiralling epidemic of obesity.

"Rising levels of obesity are increasing the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. Unless we find some way to stop this trend, it could result in significant new levels of ill health across Europe."

The five-year project involves many top European research-ers whose goal is to find four or five new genetic targets in the body that can be influenced by medicines to cure obesity and obesity-related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.

The grant is the largest the European Commission has given to obesity and diabetes research and is currently the largest award in the area of chronic diseases, excluding cancer.

A total of 24 European institutions have been awarded the grant. The project will be coordinated by Göteborg University, Sweden.

Imperial third in Europe
A list of the world's top 500 universities, ranks Imperial third in Europe and 17th best in the world.

The two-year long study, published by researchers from China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University, took into account each institution's Nobel laureates, highly cited researchers, articles published in the journals Nature and Science, and the academic performance of each faculty.

Topping the table is Harvard University, followed by Stanford, Caltech and Berkeley.

Only four European universities make the top 20; Cambri-dge is fifth, Oxford ninth and UCL is 20th.

Imperial's IDEA league partner, ETH Zürich, Switzerland, is ranked at number 25, and is the only other European university in the global top 30. TU Delft (Holland) ranks in the European top 100.

Imperial's position mirrors that of recent UK media league tables, which rank universities according to very different criteria.

Imperial was placed third in last year's Financial Times UK Universities and the Times Good Universities Guide.