The FT has been given access to one
of the most sophisticated research
facilities in the world, a laboratory
so successful that it's been called a Nobel Prize factory.
This is the MRC's Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
The LMB, as it's known for short,
has won 12 Nobels in total, more than any other institution
of its size.
So what's the secret of the lab's success?
We're here to ask some of its leading scientists first-hand.
If I knew what the secret sauce of this place is,
I would be very rich and very famous.
Unfortunately, I don't.
But one of the properties of this lab that makes it
a bit maverick is the trust and engagement with risky science
and long-term science that we believe
delivers the goods, in the end.
One of the most audacious projects
that the LMB is led by Madeline Lancaster.
Her team are encouraging stem cells
to grow into clusters of human brain tissue, sometimes
referred to as mini-brains.
These are basically 3D neural tissues that model
the developing...
May I have a look?
...human brain.
Yes, of course.
The really special aspect is that they are self-organising.
So we're not coming in and forcing the cells
to make specific cell types.
We're allowing these tissues to develop on their own.
Also, of course, in a three-dimensional conformation,
which is the way the brain develops naturally.
Using this technique, Madeline can
study the way in which healthy cells arrange themselves
within the embryonic brain.
She can even look at how neurons fire into activity.
I think, generally, if you understand how something
is built, then you'll also understand more about
how that works.
And so that's kind of the goal here,
is to try to let these things build themselves,
and we can watch that process and learn something
about human brain development, and also
what goes wrong in neurological conditions.
Madeline's method may be unusual,
but bold approaches like hers have led to revolutionary work
at the LMB.
Take her colleague, Richard Henderson.
He received the 2017 Nobel Prize for chemistry
for his work on cryo-electron microscopy, or cryo-EM.
It's a technique that quickly freezes
tiny biological molecules in a very thin layer of ice,
preserving their natural structure without the need
for unnatural staining.
The images you get are actually images
of the molecules themselves in their normal environment,
amorphous ice instead of water.
And so by recording a stack of images
like that, which would be images of the part of the molecule
at different angles, in the computer
you can process it into a high resolution
near-atomic structure.
And so instead of finding the subunit structure -
the outline of the molecule in a rough detail -
you can actually see right into it
and see all the atoms, the amino acids, the DNA,
the nucleic acids.
It can be used to understand how drugs
bind to molecules in biology.
And this is terribly important in drug design,
and it will be going to the heart
of a number of human physiologies
that we need better drugs for.
After more than 20 years of research,
cryo-EM has the potential to revolutionise
so-called structure-based drug design, making
medicines that are more effective with fewer side
effects.
It's a fantastic example of how long-term investment
by the UK's Medical Research Council
can translate directly to healthcare.
And the process is accelerated even further
when labs like the LMB work with pharmaceuticals
companies, such as AstraZeneca.
To be able to push the boundaries of science,
to work at the frontier of science
means that we have to employ the best scientists
within our laboratories.
We have to collaborate and partner with the best
scientists globally.
And these partnerships are either
to develop new approaches by which we can develop medicines,
which we can then take forward to the clinic,
or to understand the basic mechanisms of disease.
You're looking at one of the great hopes
for understanding how the brain works.
It's called a connectome, a map of some of the pathways
that information can take as it passes from neuron to neuron.
It's enriching our understanding of behaviour and memory,
and it could one day help us find a treatment
for Alzheimer's disease.
Greg, we're looking at a spectacular rotating fly's
brain.
What's it's showing us?
The big challenge at the moment in trying to understand how
brains actually control behaviour is to understand
the network of connections within the brain,
and how information flows through those networks while
the animal is producing a particular behaviour.
And that's true whether you're talking about a fly -
which is what we study - a worm, a mouse, or a human.
Even in a fly brain, which is just a millimetre across,
Greg's team have a huge task on their hands,
tracing the path of individual neurons
through stacks of electron microscope images,
and then painstakingly recreating all the connections
in a computer model.
Greg, what did it take to produce this beautiful picture?
So it took the combined efforts of many different scientists
with many expertise, there are contributions
for over 150 people in this image.
And there's about 30m clicks tracing neurons
through this electron microscopy image
data, that have turned into this image that we see here.
Good science takes a village.
Fortunately, Cambridge is building
such a village, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus.
It's already home to some 17,000 health professionals
and research scientists, and there's
space on campus for another 14 Wembley pitches
of new developments.
The impetus behind the whole project - collaboration.
Having proximity to other collaborators in the Cambridge
cluster is really important.
We've got the Royal Papworth, we've
got CRUK buildings, lots of great clinical researchers.
The key is really understanding how we take some
of the discoveries that we're building here and really bring
them in to general practise.
And I think a lot of that is understanding
how best to make the right kind of connections, how best to put
the right infrastructure and informal networks
in place to encourage dialogue.
Thanks to institutes like the LMB,
the UK is already a world leader in biomedical research
and development.
And if the country takes lessons learned
from this lab's history, it has the potential
to achieve even more success.