00:00:00:00 - 00:00:26:05 Unknown The Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, based here at the University of Oxford, was really first created by Sir David Weatherall in 1989. David's purpose was to really harness the revolution in modern molecular biology and focus it towards a deeper understanding of human disease. Collectively, our faculty brings together around 500 researchers in the fields of immunology, infection, heamatology, cancer, stem cells and developmental biology and rare disease. 00:00:26:07 - 00:00:49:06 Unknown It has been incredibly rewarding to see some of the discoveries that we've made here. Being taken forward to future patient benefits. When the win was first created, it was deliberately built on the John Radcliffe site. So in other words, very close to the hospital activity. That's really the vision for a bench to bedside institute. The Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine is a hotbed of science. 00:00:49:08 - 00:01:12:16 Unknown And central to science is making discoveries. But the WIMM places also a lot of emphasis in taking those discoveries to improve human health. What's really remarkable and unique about our institute is that over half of the group leaders are clinically trained. This is really important to have those close links, because we're able to found our research questions on the challenges that patients face in the clinic. 00:01:12:18 - 00:01:53:14 Unknown The WIMM is one of the most productive environments for spinning out companies in the whole of Oxford University. One company that spun out, many years ago now, Immunocore - it developed a completely new class of medicines that is helping to extend the survival of cancer patients who have a very difficult cancer diagnosis. We're hugely fortunate in the WIMM to have world class core facilities including flow cytometry, single cell, imaging, mass spectrometry and genome engineering. That enables us to increase the scope, increase the scale, increase the quality and the quantity of the data that we’re able to generate. 00:01:53:16 - 00:02:14:19 Unknown Our work has established the molecular basis of thalassemia and identified key genes and processes in a variety of human genetic diseases. We have designed methods to study how our genes are regulated, and we created novel cancer therapies and explained how blood cells function. One thing I would say that's really good about WIMM is collaborative research, because there are diverse teams with different focus. 00:02:15:00 - 00:02:35:05 Unknown I think one of the highlights of the WIMM building is the coffee lounge. It's the one place everybody in the institute can kind of come together and hang out and have, like casual chats about everything under the sun, from punting to whatever else. But then you also get conversations about diverse scientific questions. That informal mixing of scientific thought is incredibly important for innovation. 00:02:35:07 - 00:02:59:14 Unknown In fact, Peter Ratcliffe famously remarks in his Nobel lecture how this is where the origin of the key experiment that proved his oxygen sensing hypothesis was conceived. Oxford is a truly inspiring place to do research. It's an incredibly beautiful city with an extremely long history. I think we're really uniquely placed to take advantage of collaborations that can form naturally with researchers across disciplines. 00:02:59:15 - 00:03:04:16 Unknown Essentially bridging the gap between enabling technologies, scientific knowhow and 00:03:04:16 - 00:03:11:06 Unknown impact for patients.