Babraham Institute Science

Mission and Remit

• The Babraham Institute is an independent charitable life sciences Institute, sponsored by the BBSRC, carrying out world-leading innovative research and advanced training with relevance to the biomedical, biotechnological, pharmaceutical and healthcare research and user communities.
• The Institute's research focuses on the mechanisms of cell signalling and gene regulation which underlie normal cellular processes and functions, and on how their failure or abnormality may lead to disease.
  

Overview of scientific expertise

An independent charitable life sciences Institute, sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council ( BBSRC ), the Babraham Institute undertakes world-leading innovative research and advanced training with relevance to the biomedical, biotechnological, pharmaceutical and healthcare communities. The latest technologies are used to study how normal cellular processes operate and change during development and with age, and also how they can go wrong in disease. In this way, the Institute serves society by directing discoveries to the improvement of the quality of life. The Institute's research effort underpins the overall healthcare responsibility of the BBSRC and aims to provide novel targets for the development of therapies and diagnostics of potential social and economic benefit.

Understanding important processes in early development and key functions in the brain, heart and immune systems are central to the Institute's research remit. Research focuses on the mechanisms of cell signalling and gene regulation, which underlie normal cellular processes and functions, and on how their failure or abnormality may lead to diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, rheumatoid arthritis, and foetal abnormality. Major breakthroughs have been made at the Institute, giving insight into medical conditions like hypertension, cardiac arrhythmia and heart failure, infertility, cancer and bipolar disorders such as manic depressive illness. Institute scientists are striving to find cures for conditions where there is currently no treatment or where the existing treatment is not fully effective or causes serious side effects. The institute is committed to communicating the significance of its findings to the public through a broad range of outreach activities.

For further information see BI Research pages