|
 The Minister for Education and Science, Ms Mary Hanafin, TD, attended the signing of a new agreement between the three leading medical schools in Ireland which forms a single entity for high level medical research and teaching in Dublin.
The agreement signed today (25 April 2005) extends the ownership of the Dublin Molecular Medicine Centre (DMMC) from its founding universities - Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin � to include the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland as an equal partner. The DMMC is a limited company with charity status, the formation of which was made possible with funding from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) through the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) cycle
2 and further developed in cycle 3 through The Programme for Human Genomics in partnership with RCSI.
Standing from left: Professor Niall O�Higgins (University College Dublin and President of Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland), Ms Mary Hanafin, TD (Minister for Education and Science), Dr. Pierre Meulien (Chief Executive Officer, Dublin Molecular Medicine Centre).
Sitting from left: Dr. John Hegarty (Provost, Trinity College Dublin), Mr. Michael Horgan (Chief Executive Officer and Registrar, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland), Dr. Michael Kamarck (Chair of DMMC Board and Senior Vice President, Wyeth BioPharma), Dr. Hugh Brady (President, University College Dublin).
The primary aim of the DMMC is to undertake biomedical research, which can ultimately translate into patient treatments in a range of illnesses including prostate and other cancers, psychiatric disorders, cardiovascular disease, inflammatory and infectious diseases. Through the DMMC, almost 200 academic principal investigators, clinicians and clinical scientists will work together to a degree that is unparalleled in Ireland.
The inclusion of RCSI in the DMMC forms a single pool of medical expertise in Dublin. International experience shows that in order to make significant breakthroughs, clinical researchers need to be working in a population in excess of one million people. By combining the patient populations of their affiliated teaching hospitals and sharing their varied and complementary research expertise, the DMMC creates a critical mass in Dublin that will facilitate international research breakthroughs.
�Instead of individual medical researchers working in isolation in a single hospital, we can, through the DMMC, build collaborative clinical research programmes and maximise our ability to find and develop treatments for a number of diseases�, said Dr Michael Kamarck, Chairman of DMMC and Senior Vice-President at Wyeth BioPharma. �The universities and hospitals in Dublin are in a unique position to leverage the recent increased funding for research, the developments in clinical research and the potential to interact strategically with the ever present Biotech and Pharmaceutical sector in Ireland.�
The clinical scientists in the DMMC also play an important teaching role through their affiliation with the major Dublin teaching hospitals of Adelaide & Meath incorporating the National Children�s Hospital, Beaumont Hospital, Mater Misericordiae University Hospital, Our Lady�s Hospital for Sick Children, St James�s Hospital and St Vincent�s University Hospital.
The DMMC also provides a mechanism to invest and share high cost, large-scale equipment. In the past three years the DMMC has been able to develop complementary high technology platforms costing millions of Euro across the city, which are shared by the research community.
An added benefit of the DMMC is the potential to attract the research investment support of major biopharmaceutical companies who will ultimately develop the drugs and therapies to treat patients.
|
