London

All together: researchers wrestle with blood plasma shortly after the National Institute of Medical Research opened in 1950. Credit: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

Scientists at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) at Mill Hill in north London are worried that their institute could soon be split up.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) has confirmed that it is revisiting a previous decision to keep the NIMR — one of Britain's premier centres for basic medical research — on one site.

The MRC has been trying to shift the emphasis of the institute more towards clinical research, and last year suggested that the site should be moved closer to a research hospital, proposing Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge (see Nature 423, 573; 200310.1038/423573b).

After protests by the institute's researchers, a task force decided in March this year that the institute would not move to Cambridge, but would instead stay put or move to a different, single site in London. It rejected another proposal that the institute be broken into pieces to be closer to hospitals around London.

But last month the task force had a change of heart. In response to an MRC-commissioned study on investment requirements, carried out by consultancy company Ove Arup and Partners, it reinstated the option of “an institute located on more than one site”.

The task force has since consulted London hospitals and colleges that could potentially offer sites to the new NIMR. “We asked what they could do and they have offered a variety of proposals,” says Colin Blakemore, chief executive of the MRC and chairman of the task force reviewing the institute's fate. “We would like to keep the NIMR as one institute. But there are practical constraints,” he says. “We have to look at more modest possibilities.”

Some of the roughly 600 NIMR scientists, students and staff are now convinced that their institute is destined to be split into pieces around London. “The idea of them finding a single site is unlikely,” says Barrie Brown, head of labour relations for Amicus MSF, one of the NIMR's trade unions. “Our priority is to retain a single-site institute, because we think it is a driving force for medical research,” says Brown.

The task force aims to present a London site proposal to the MRC in July.