London

Plans to move Britain's National Institute for Medical Research to a site outside London have been scrapped, according to a task force run by the institute's funders, the Medical Research Council (MRC).

The announcement is a partial victory for the institute's researchers, who protested last year when the MRC suggested moving the centre to Addenbrookes Hospital in Cambridge. The move was intended to improve links between clinical and basic researchers (see Nature 423, 573; 200310.1038/423573b).

But it will not end the uncertainty surrounding the future of the institute, based in Mill Hill in north London. The task force says that the centre needs to support more clinical studies, and may be better off closer to London hospitals.

The group was set up after last June's protests, and is chaired by MRC chief executive Colin Blakemore. Results of an 8 February meeting, published on 4 March, show that the task force rejected options to close the institute, move it, or sell its site and spread the work around other London institutes.

But the group has not decided whether the institute will stay where it is, with added facilities for clinicians, or move to a more central site. “Both options require substantial investment,” notes taskforce member Robin Lovell-Badge, a developmental geneticist at the institute. Funding issues will be discussed at the next meeting on 18 April.

The need for greater clinical integration, emphasized by task-force suggestions that the institute's name be changed to the MRC National Institute for Human Health, has already been made a priority by Blakemore. The move mirrors the situation in the United States, where the National Institutes of Health is attempting to channel basic research in areas such as genomics into clinical advances.