Summary

The UK Medical Bioinformatics partnership programme (UK Med-Bio) (Elliott, PI), funded by the MRC, brings together a group of leading multidisciplinary teams in medical, chemical, metabolic, statistical and computational sciences from across Imperial College London (ICL, lead institution) and its partners. These include the Institute of Cancer Research, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute, the Universities of Oxford, Swansea and Nottingham, and the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre and MRC Elsie Widdowson Laboratory, supported by strong partnerships and collaborative links with industry, the NHS and the National Institute for Health Research funded Biomedical Research Centres and Units.

Key components

As part of the programme, a dedicated infrastructure in data storage, aggregation, analysis and visualisation of diverse types of biomedical data has been built. These come from standard clinical sources through to different types of information including from genetic analysis, and metabolic information, that help us to define patients or people studied in the general population using a holistic "systems medicine" framework.

Global aim

The global aim is to make major advances in understanding the causes and reasons for disease progression of common human diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and metabolic disorders such as type 2 diabetes and obesity. In this way, we aim to create new disease diagnostics and prognostics aimed at the individual patient ("stratified medicine") through innovations in medical bioinformatics with powerful computing capability.