Opening Address to the 15th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Molecular Medicine
Durkan Theatre, Trinity Centre for Health Sciences, St James's Hospital, Dublin
Friday, 09 November 2012
Colleagues, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
You’re all most welcome to the 15th Annual meeting of the Institute of Molecular Medicine here in the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences in St James’s Hospital.
It is, of course, an exciting time for St James’s. Those of our visitors coming from abroad may not be aware that St James’s has just been named as the site of a new children’s hospital.
The National Children’s Hospital, which is to be developed on a 16 acre site on this campus, will complement St James’s existing services. Trinity has long been associated with St James’s, opening the Trinity Centre for Health Sciences here in 1994. We’re delighted that the National Children’s Hospital is to be located here and that Irish medical schools will now have a first-rate academic teaching and research hospital for the associated disciplines. We look forward to developing a strong relationship with the National Children's Hospital.
Professor Padraic Fallon, Interim Director of IMM is Professor in Translational Immunology who works with the National Children’s Research Centre, in the area of inflammatory disease in children.
I know that Professor Carlos Blanco, who is Director of that Centre, is here today and I welcome him to this meeting. On the eve of the Children’s referendum, it’s exciting to think of how Padraic and other IMM researchers will co-ordinate with the National Children’s Research Centre and with the new National Children’s Hospital to deliver better services and improve the health of our children.
Today’s conference is on the theme of inflammation and immunity. On behalf of IMM, I’d like to extend a welcome to all of today’s speakers and chairpersons, and a particular welcome to the speakers from abroad, Professor Ken Smith, a world leader in auto-immunity from the University of Cambridge, and Professor Anne O’Garra, from the MRC National Institute for Medical Research, who is a leading authority on immunity to tuberculosis. You can look forward to some great papers.
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I’d like to talk briefly now about the Institute for Molecular Medicine, and about Trinity’s general approach to health science education and research.
The Institute for Molecular Medicine, or the IMM, was officially opened in 2003. It grew out of the MSc in Molecular Medicine which has been running for sixteen years now, and out of a PhD programme. Today, the IMM also offers a Diploma in Molecular Medicine.
IMM is funded by the Higher Education Authority and has also received considerable philanthropic support. We are today in the John Durkan Memorial Lecture theatre. This is part of the John Durkan Leukemia Research Laboratories, which were funded by Bill and Beatrice Durkan in memory of their son John who died from complications following bone marrow transplantation while being treated here in St James’s.
John was a noted horse trainer, and outside this lecture theatre are the racing silks from the jockey who rode his most famous horse, Istabraq.
IMM was founded as a Centre for Excellence to permit the rapid translation of bioscience from the lab bench to the patient in the hospital bed. Today it houses over forty Principal Investigators and 150 scientists.
A unique feature of IMM is that it is an environment of basic and clinical scientists. Clinician scientists from both St James’s Hospital and Tallaght Hospital run active research groups in IMM to great effect.
Indeed Professor Mark Little of IMM and Tallaght Hospital was the recipient of a prestigious SFI President of Ireland Young Researcher Award. This is only the second time a clinician has received this award, and the first clinician awardee, Professor James O’Donnell, is also an IMM Principal Investigator. Two other IMM clinicians, Professor Joe Keane and Professor John O’Leary, were recently awarded Health Research Board awards.
You get the picture: we’re very proud of this Institute, its researchers, and the work they do. Research in IMM encompasses six of Trinity’s 18 multidisciplinary thematic research areas:
- Next Generation Medical Devices,
- Cancer,
- Neurosciences,
- Infection and Immunity,
- Nano-medicine, and
- Ageing.
Interdisciplinarity is a hallmark of Trinity research. Our animating ethos rests on the belief that problems are best solved, and inspiration best gained, by combining strengths across disciplines and levels of analysis.
One of my pledges when I took office as Provost last year was that Trinity would “play for Ireland on the world stage”. What I was hoping to get across with this statement, was that Trinity is proud of its position as Ireland’s highest ranking university, and that we accept the responsibility which comes with being in receipt of both public and private funds.
Trinity’s accountability, excellence in research, and international standing, is a key component of how we tackle the challenge of economic and social regeneration in this country. In Trinity we are used to strategizing around the idea that what’s good for the university is good for the country, and vice versa.
We know that the location of the Trinity Centre for Health Science here in St James’s has been good for the hospital, and therefore for the people of Dublin and Ireland. I have no doubt that IMM will remain at the epicentre of future developments on the St James’s Hospital campus.
Such developments will include not only the new National Children’s Hospital, but the Wellcome Trust/Health Research Board clinical research facility. We all look forward to the opening in Spring 2013 of this facility, under the directorship of Professor Michael Gill.
And the next phase of IMM’s development is already underway: it will involve the creation of a new institute, the Trinity Translational Medical Institute, or TTMI. This new institute will help our researchers to “translate” rapidly from major discoveries to the development and use of new drugs and devices for patients.
By the way, if you want further elucidation on this term ‘translational’ in connection with medicine, you can ask the only person with the work 'translational' in his job title: Professor of Translational Immunology, Padraic Fallon, who is today delivering the 9th IMM lecture, which is in fact entitled “Translational inflammation from mice to men”.
This year saw the formal launch of Trinity Health Ireland, a collaborative initiative between Trinity College Dublin, St James’s Hospital and Tallaght Hospital.
Trinity Health Ireland's vision is (I quote): “to measurably improve the quality of life of our patients by delivering a world-class healthcare system, which seamlessly integrates community, primary and social care with specialist hospital care, and rapidly delivers the benefits of new research and therapies to the healthcare system”.
Thus research in our new Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute on Pearse Street will progress via IMM and the future Translational Medical Institute, through the new Wellcome Trust/HRB Clinical Research Facility, to the patients in our associated teaching hospitals of St James’s and Tallaght.
And I hope someone will draw me up a flow-chart of that!
On a more serious note, we know the shortcomings in the Irish healthcare system – we read about them on a daily basis and some of us have experienced them. There are few jobs more vital in government than improving healthcare –President’s Obama recent re-election is testimony to dealing resolutely with issues surrounding healthcare systems. Trinity is committed to playing its part in making this country’s healthcare system world-class.
Thank you very much.
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