The Francis Crick Institute

The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute dedicated to understanding the fundamental biology underlying health and disease. Its work is helping to understand why disease develops and to translate discoveries into new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections, and neurodegenerative diseases.

An independent organisation, its founding partners are the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL (University College London), Imperial College London and King's College London.

The Crick was formed in 2015, and in 2016 it moved into a brand new state-of-the-art building in central London which brings together 1500 scientists and support staff working collaboratively across disciplines, making it the biggest biomedical research facility under a single roof in Europe.

The Francis Crick Institute will be world-class with a strong national role. Its distinctive vision for excellence includes commitments to collaboration; to developing emerging talent and exporting it the rest of the UK; to public engagement; and to helping turn discoveries into treatments as quickly as possible to improve lives and strengthen the economy. 

The Crick has a multinational outlook. We are proud to be a diverse, open and international institute, with staff from over 70 countries.

The Francis Crick Institute is a registered charity. Overall responsibility for setting the strategic direction of the institute lies with its Board. An Executive Management Team led by Sir Paul Nurse is responsible for leading the organisation and implementing its scientific vision and research strategy.

The organisations in the consortium have invested a total of around £650 million to establish the institute and to ensure that it is resourced to make a major impact.

The MRC's National Institute for Medical Research and CRUK's London Research Institute (at Lincoln's Inn Fields and Clare Hall) became part of the Francis Crick Institute on 1 April 2015. Researchers from these institutes moved into the new Crick Lab in a phased process over a number of months.