Glasgow joins Liverpool in new Wellcome Trust Centre for Global Health Research

The joint Centre for Global Health Research aims to promote science and drive strategic research collaboration in global health

The Wellcome Trust Tropical Centre, a joint initiative between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, has been awarded funding to become the Wellcome Trust-Liverpool-Glasgow Centre for Global Health Research.

The new Centre will build on the Wellcome Trust Tropical Centre’s experience of tackling issues of public health in environments where disease burdens are highest.

Combining expertise

It will combine expertise from Glasgow, including the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, which has developed a research in tropical parasitological research and applied immunology, ecology, molecular cell biology and polyomics to both parasites and their vectors.

The joint Centre for Global Health Research aims to promote science and drive strategic research collaboration in global health by supporting researchers from the UK and low and middle income countries to become independent researchers and future leaders in global health.

Professor Neil French, Deputy Director of the new Centre, from the University’s Institute of Infection and Global Health, said: “The Centre will support academic careers by providing researchers with ongoing mentorship, high quality research opportunities and access to cutting edge laboratory science.  Collaboration with international partners, across a wide spectrum of global health disciplines will allow research to be conducted in settings with the greatest disease burden.”

The Liverpool-Glasgow Centre will also build on the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme (MLW), an internationally-recognised centre of research excellence and research training in partnership with the University of Malawi College Of Medicine.

Global health

Many of the Tropical Centre’s previous 60 research fellows have spent time at MLW before returning to academic positions in Liverpool.

It will expand the Tropical Centre partners to include the National Institute for Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore, India and a Wellcome Trust funded programme in Quito in Ecuador.

The Centre will be one of the Wellcome Trust’s five Centres for Global Health Research sharing in more than £750,000 of the £3m that the Wellcome Trust has committed to the Centres over the next five years.