Top UK laboratories adjust as Wellcome Trust cuts core funding

Some of the UK’s most prestigious life science laboratories are having to review their research strategies to adjust to reduced funding as the Wellcome Trust winds down its long-established system of institutional funding.

Under a revamp of the biomedical research charity’s funding, the Wellcome Trust is ending its ongoing support for its research centres with funding directed towards new “discovery research platforms”, of which eight were awarded a total of £73 million in May 2023.

The changes are likely to affect the 15 Wellcome centres, which received about £25 million a year in core funding. Many of the centres are now having to cope without this funding stream after their core grants ran out at the end of 2023, with senior scientists anxiously seeking replacement funds from other sources, Times Higher Education has been told.

One of those affected is the Gurdon Institute, a research laboratory at the University of Cambridge that focuses on cancer and developmental biology. It was founded in 1989 and renamed in 2004 after Sir John Gurdon, the biologist who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012, whose research group is based there.

It is believed that about £2 million of the Gurdon’s annual budget – which was £15.6 million in the latest available accounts – came from Wellcome’s core support funding, with the lab’s income also heavily dependent on competitively won grants from the charity.

Ben Simons, the centre’s director, said that the Gurdon Institute had been “generously supported by Wellcome as one of its UK centres”, and that the charity had, over the past 30 years, helped to “enable a visionary programme in developmental and disease biology”.

“Following the decision of Wellcome to move away from a centre funding model, the institute has taken the opportunity to refresh its research strategy while retaining the collaborative ethos that has nurtured innovation, discovery and translation, and attracted the brightest talent from across the globe,” said Professor Simons.

He added that “with the enthusiastic support and investment of the university, the Gurdon Institute will evolve its research emphasis towards human developmental and disease biology, capitalising on new advances in the field, and leveraging existing strengths across the biological and biomedical campus as well as its affiliated institutions”.

Other Wellcome centres, which received £118 million in funding for the following five years in 2016, include the Wellcome Trust Centre for Mitochondrial Research at Newcastle University, the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the University of Dundee and the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology at the University of Glasgow, with institutes also based at the University of Exeter, King’s College London, UCL and the University of Oxford. Some of these centres’ core funding is believed to expire in the next 12 to 18 months, with talks under way to extend funding with the charity.

A Wellcome spokesperson told THE that the charity was “immensely proud to have supported 15 Wellcome centres, including the Wellcome/CRUK Gurdon Institute, which have produced remarkable and world-leading research”.

“These awards were due to come to an end this year. Our grants are provided over agreed time frames, and we work very closely with researchers when awards approach their end,” the spokesperson said.

The charity, which spends about £1.4 billion a year, added that “in line with our current strategy, Wellcome is funding more targeted opportunities that will unlock new possibilities for researchers and have the most impact for the wider, global community”.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com