The Institute of Cancer Research

The Institute of Cancer Research is a public research institute and university located in London, United Kingdom, specialised in oncology, and a constituent college of the University of London. It was founded in 1909 as a research department of the Royal Marsden Hospital and joined the University of London in 2003. It has been responsible for a number of breakthrough discoveries, including that the basic cause of cancer is damage to DNA.

The ICR occupies sites in Chelsea, Central London and Sutton, southwest London, and had a total income of £96.4 million in 2012/13, of which £52.3 million was from peer-reviewed research grant awards. The ICR provides both taught postgraduate degree programmes and research degrees and currently has around 340 students. Together with the Royal Marsden Hospital the ICR forms the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Europe, and was ranked first amongst all British higher education institutions in the Times Higher Education 2014 Research Excellence Framework Table of Excellence. In clinical medicine, 83% and in biological sciences, 96% of the ICR’s academic research was assessed to be world leading or internationally excellent .

The ICR receives its external grant funding from the government body the Higher Education Funding Council for England, from government research council bodies and from charities including the Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research. It also receives voluntary income from legacies and from public and corporate donations. The ICR also runs a number of fundraising appeals and campaigns which help support a variety of cancer research projects.

The ICR has recently started work on a £20 million Centre for Cancer Imaging that will bring together experts in a range of different imaging techniques who will work together developing better cancer diagnostic and treatment techniques. The centre is scheduled to open in Autumn 2014.

The organisation’s research direction is set out in the ICR Scientific Strategy 2010–2015, which aims to develop key research areas while enhancing partnership affiliations. Its four objectives are to maintain, develop and exploit the unique relationship with the Marsden; to ensure a balanced portfolio of basic and applied research; to develop treatment regimes to the genetic makeup of patient and tumour (personalised medicine) and to recruit, retain and motivate the best staff. The ICR also assisted Professor Christopher Nutting and his team at the Royal Marsden Hospital in managing a series of randomised trials using IMRT aimed at reducing the potential side-effects of radiotherapy treatment for head and neck cancers.

1970 to 2000

Scientists at the ICR were instrumental in the development of one of the world's most widely used anti-cancer drugs, carboplatin.Carboplatin’s development began in 1970 after scientists in the United States discovered that the platinum-based compound cisplatin was effective against many tumours – but had serious side-effects. A team of ICR and RMH scientists and clinicians including Professors Ken Harrap and Tom Connors, Dr Hilary Calvert and Hospital Consultant Dr Eve Wiltshaw recognised its potential but also the need for a less toxic alternative.In collaboration with the chemical and precious metal company Johnson Matthey plc the ICR scientists evaluated some 300 different platinum-containing molecules and developed a series of second-generation compounds, of which carboplatin was selected as the lead. The first clinical trial of carboplatin was carried out in 1981 and it was launched commercially as Parplatin in 1986. As of 2012 carboplatin is in use for a range of cancers including ovarian and lung. For the development of these platinum-based anticancer drugs the ICR, together with The Royal Marsden Hospital and Johnson Matthey plc, received the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement in 1991.

During the 1980s ICR scientists including Professors Hilary Calvert, and Ken Harrap and Dr Ann Jackman developed raltitrexed at the ICR, a drug active for the treatment of colon and other cancers. In 1983 research teams at the Chester Beatty Laboratory of the ICR led by Professors Chris Marshall FRS and Alan Hall FRS discoveredN-RAS, one of the first human cancer transforming genes . Professor Alan Hall went on in 1992 to discover that the molecular mechanism for the motility behaviour of animal cells is through control of cytoskeletal assembly by specific GTPase-proteins, known as Rho and Rac. The discovery is of fundamental significance in cancer research since cell motility is a key feature of cancer cell behaviour during metastasis.

2000 to present

In 2000 Professor Michael Stratton at the ICR initiated the Cancer Genome Project, which was aimed at capitalizing on the knowledge from the Human Genome sequence to screen all human genes in cancer cells to identify those genes responsible for specific cancers. The project was established at the genome sequencing facilities of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, of which Professor Stratton is now the Director. One of the first major achievements of the Cancer Genome Project has been the characterisation of the cancer gene BRAF in collaboration with ICR scientists Professors Chris Marshall and Richard Marais. The research by the ICR team, published in June 2002, revealed that damage to the BRAF gene could cause up to 70 per cent of melanoma skin cancers. This has been instrumental in speeding up the development of new drugs for the treatment of malignant melanoma. Since 2002 the ICR has been working to develop drugs that inhibit BRAF in melanoma and other cancers where the gene is defective.


The Great Exhibition in 1851 was organised by Prince Albert, Henry Cole, Francis Fuller and other members of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. The Great Exhibition made a surplus of £186,000 used in creating an area in the South of Kensington celebrating the encouragement of the arts, industry, and science. Albert insisted the Great Exhibition surplus should be used as a home for culture and education for everyone. His commitment was to find practical solutions to today's social challenges. Prince Albert's vision built the Victoria and Albert Museum, Science Museum, Natural History Museum, Geological Museum, Royal College of Science, Royal College of Art, Royal School of Mines, Royal School of Music, Royal College of Organists, Royal School of Needlework,Royal Geographical Society, Institute of Recorded Sound, Royal Horticultural Gardens, Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial Institute.Royal colleges and the Imperial Institute merged to form what is now Imperial College London.

South Kensington

Imperial's main campus is located in the South Kensington area of central London. It is situated in an area of South Kensington, known asAlbertopolis, which has a high concentration of cultural institutions: Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum, Kensington Palace & Gardens, Hyde Park, Brompton Oratory, Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art, National Art Library,Royal Geographical Society, and the Royal Albert Hall. Its location is also in close proximity to international embassies.

The Imperial Institute was created in 1887 to celebrate Queen Victoria's Jubilee with the intention of it being a scientific research institution for the development of the British Empire. The expansion of the South Kensington campus in the 1950s & 1960s absorbed the former Imperial Institute, designed by Thomas Collcutt, of which only the Queen's Tower remains among the more modern buildings.

Recent projects include the Imperial College Business School, the Ethos sports centre, the Southside hall of residence and the Eastside hall of residence. Current projects include the reconstruction of the south-eastern quadrant of the South Kensington campus, and the White City Innovation Campus.

Finances and endowment

In the financial year ended 31 July 2015, Imperial had a total net income of £969.3 million and total expenditure of £835 million. Key sources of income included 427.7 million from research grants and contracts, £223.4 million from academic fees and support grants, £155.4 million from Funding Council grants and £9.1 million from endowment and investment income. During the 2014/15 financial year Imperial had a capital expenditure of £236 million.

The college's endowment is sub-divided into three distinct portfolios: (i) Unitised Scheme – a unit trust vehicle for college, Faculties and Departments to invest endowments and unfettered income to produce returns for the long term; (ii) Non-Core Property – a portfolio containing around 120 operational and developmental properties which college has determined are not core to the academic mission; and (iii) Strategic Asset Investments – containing college’s shareholding in Imperial Innovations and other restricted equity holdings. During the year 2014/15, the market value of the endowment increased by £78 million (18%) to £512.4 million on 31 July 2015.

National

Imperial consistently scores strongly in the UK university rankings and is ranked 3rd in the 2015 Times Higher Education "Table of Tables" which combines the results of the 3 main domestic league tables.[64] In the 2016 Complete University Guide, all 14 of the subjects offered by Imperial were ranked top 10 nationally meaning it was one of only two mainstream universities in the UK to have all subjects ranked in the top 10.

Career Prospects

In the 2016 Guardian University Guide and Complete University Guide, Imperial students were ranked as having the top employment prospects among UK universities.As of 2014 the starting salary of an Imperial graduate was the highest of any UK university. The New York Times ranked Imperial College as one of the top 10 most-welcomed universities by the global job market