Report of the General Board on the establishment of a Genzyme Professorship of Experimental Medicine

The GENERAL BOARD beg leave to report to the University as follows:

1. Whilst 'Experimental Medicine' is a broad term, it is currently used to refer in particular to the translational application of laboratory science and basic discovery to develop new therapeutic and diagnostic interventions that directly benefit patients. In this setting, Experimental Medicine can thus be defined as clinical investigation directed at establishing disease causation and 'proof of concept' by testing the validity and importance of new discoveries made in the laboratory as treatments in patients or healthy volunteers, bringing together laboratory and clinical patient-based research to address important questions about health and disease. There is a current consensus in the UK around the need for a greater investment in clinical research including 'Experimental Medicine'.

2. The School of Clinical Medicine, in association with Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (Addenbrooke's) is one of five academic health centres in the UK which were awarded a Wellcome Trust Millennial Clinical Research Facility, which enabled and stimulated a culture of clinical research in the hospital and the School. In the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research (CIMR) approximately half of the principal investigators are clinically qualified and work as clinicians in the hospital. The other research institutes on the site, including the new CR-UK Cancer Research Institute, the Cambridge Institute for Diabetes, and the Centre for Brain Repair, provide additional potential for translational clinical research. Under currently proposed new NHS Research and Development (R&D) initiatives, it is likely there will be a small number of selected comprehensive academic health centres which will receive enhanced subventions of NHS R&D funding and Cambridge would wish to be one such centre. In addition, the Department of Medicine have identified a need to expose medical students to clinical research in their undergraduate training, now planned in the context of the new curriculum in Cambridge, introduced from 1 September 2005 with a three-year extended clinical course, and to encourage postgraduate medical doctors to train as clinical scientists.

3. A opportunity to develop work in this area has now arisen as the Genzyme Corporation have made a donation to Cambridge in America, of $250,000 a year for five years, expressing their hope that it will support a Professorship at Cambridge to be called the Genzyme Professorship of Experimental Medicine. The Faculty Board of Clinical Medicine now wish to establish the Professorship in the Department of Medicine. In the event of no further funding being available beyond the initial five-year term, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust have undertaken to meet the full costs of the Professorship, at Consultant level, for a single tenure and in the event of any shortfall in this NHS funding, the School would meet the full cost of the office from its existing resources. Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust would award an honorary Consultant contract to the Professor and provide full access to appropriate clinical facilities, and appropriate research facilities will be provided within the School through its Institutes or the Department of Medicine.

4. The General Board have accepted the Faculty Board's proposal and have agreed that election to the Professorship should be made by an ad hoc Board of Electors and that, on this occasion, preference be given to candidates with an interest in one of the specialities related to the general field of internal medicine.

5. The General Board recommend:

I. That a Professorship of Experimental Medicine be established in the University, for a single tenure from 1 October 2006, placed in Schedule B of the Statutes, and assigned to the Department of Medicine.

II. That the Professorship be entitled the Genzyme Professorship of Experimental Medicine until 30 September 2011.

III. That regulations for the Genzyme Professorship of Experimental Medicine, as set out in the Schedule to this Report, be approved.

SCHEDULE

Genzyme Professor of Experimental Medicine.   2006.   Medicine

1. The sums received from the Board of Cambridge in America representing a donation from the Genzyme Corporation for the support of the Genzyme Professorship of Experimental Medicine shall form a fund called The Genzyme Experimental Medicine Fund.

2. If and whenever the income of the Fund exceeds the amount required for the payment of the stipend, national insurance, pension contributions, and associated indirect costs of the Professor payable by the University, the excess of the income over that amount shall be applied to support the work of the Professor in such a manner as may be approved by the Faculty Board of Clinical Medicine on the recommendation of the Head of the Department of Medicine.

3. Any unexpended income in a financial year shall, in any subsequent year, be expended in accordance with Regulation 2.