Francis Crick Institute Celebrates Formal Opening

The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh, accompanied by The Duke of York, officially opened the £650 million Francis Crick Institute in London during November. During a tour of the facility, the biggest biomedical research institute under one roof in Europe, The Queen also started the sequencing of Sir Paul Nurse's genome - all three billion letters in his DNA code.

Paul Nurse, director of the Crick, former president of the Royal Society and Nobel laureate, said: "It was a delight to welcome the Queen to our new building for the Francis Crick Institute and show her some of the science that we are carrying out to understand the human body better in health and disease."

He added: "As part of the visit, she sequenced my genome and we'll find out the results in the coming weeks. In our normal work at the Crick, we use this type of advanced sequencing to understand more about genetic influences on disease, or the changes that occur in cancer cells as tumours develop."

A registered charity, the Crick was formed on 1 April 2015. 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 Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh saw some of the state-of-the-art facilities for research, including the advanced sequencing and peptide chemistry laboratories. They met many of the scientists and staff of the Crick, along with major donors who contributed to the Crick via a Cancer Research UK fundraising campaign and were also introduced to representatives of each founding partner.

With the scale, vision and expertise to tackle some of the most challenging scientific questions underpinning health and disease the Crick also has a strong national role. By taking a collaborative approach, training future science leaders, taking forward discoveries towards new treatments for patients and engaging with schools and the public, the Crick aims to boost UK science and help drive the UK economy.