About the Building

Beatson Translational Research Centre will be the first purpose build facility of its kind in Scotland.

This facility will convert basic cancer research into real improvements in patients’ lives.  It will specialise in the common tumours and those that cause the most deaths in Scotland such as endocrine (breast, prostate and ovarian); smoking related (lung, throat, oral) and gastrointestinal. Since the campaign was launched over £9 million has been pledged.  We aim to have the majority of the funds raised by the time building starts in the spring of 2011.

The University is jointly developing the Centre with the Beatson Institute, Cancer Research UK and the Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board and it will form part of the largest comprehensive cancer centre in Scotland. It will also be one of the largest in the UK.

There are three key factors in the equation to solve the problem of cancer:

• Basic scientific research which explores the cellular mechanisms of cancer, and seeks ways to understand, prevent and cure it;
• Clinical care which enables patients to fight and survive their illness;
• Translational research which converts basic research into improvements in patients’ lives by turning knowledge into treatments.

Recent huge investment has meant that the first two of these three requirements are now in place in Glasgow with the provision of the following facilities:

Basic research: the Glasgow Biobank which provides blood and tissue samples for investigation and the new £20M scientific research facility at the Beatson Institute at Garscube.

Clinical care: a clinical facility at the Southern General Hospital and the new Beatson Oncology Centre at Gartnavel, where patients go for treatment.

The Beatson Translational Research Centre will be the third and vital factor, linking the scientists in the laboratory to the patients in the clinic.  It will be a much needed catalyst for accelerating the process of understanding the disease, improving existing therapies, identifying new ones, and bringing them to patients.

The Beatson TRC will be the only translational research facility dedicated to cancer in Scotland.  It will greatly increase the scale of activity, allowing for 150 scientists to be dedicated to translational research.   There will, therefore, be a worldwide recruitment drive to staff the new facility.

Without the Beatson Translational Research Centre there would be an undoubted gap in the work of the clinicians and scientists in Glasgow, greatly undermining the potential to save lives by slowing down time to make drugs available to patients.  These combined factors put Glasgow in a strong position to make a significant and long term impact on speeding up the process of drug discovery, prevention and treatment, targeted to the common cancers.

To view the build in progress on our webcam click here