Plans to shift the UK's leading medical research institute to central London are under fire because the move would include the institute's facility for working with dangerous pathogens.

In July 2005, the Medical Research Council (MRC) announced a plan to relocate the prestigious National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) from its home in suburban Mill Hill to London. The MRC has claimed that the move would foster more clinical research, primarily through collaboration with the University College London and its teaching hospital. The announcement came after months of acrimonious debate between the council and the institute's researchers (Nat. Med. 10, 762; 2004).

Many hospitals and universities in London have high-level containment facilities. Nick Winterton, Medical Research Council

British intelligence and local politicians are now raising doubts about the MRC's plan to house the institute's level-4 containment facility on the eleventh floor of a new building in the heavily populated area.

According to a report in The Evening Standard, the UK's MI5 National Security Advice Centre has raised “grave concerns” about the potential release of dangerous pathogens, either through a terrorist attack on the building or during transportation to and from the facility. MI5 has to approve any plans for level-4 facilities.

Nick Winterton, the MRC's executive director, downplays the security concerns, saying the initial proposal is “a fairly broad-brush feasibility plan.” The MRC is considering several options including separating the level-4 facility from the institute's new location, he says.

But NIMR scientists say splitting the facility would seriously hamper research. “It would be grossly inefficient,” says Jonathan Stoye, head of the institute's division of virology. Much of the research at the facility involves animals that must be monitored constantly, Stoye says. “You'd have people running backwards and forwards several times a day. I don't think you can run a facility on such a basis.” An NIMR report last April strongly recommended including the lab in any relocation plans.

The facility—equivalent to a US biosafety level-4 lab—is one of only a handful in the UK and is being used almost exclusively for analyzing samples of flu virus from around the world. The lab is part of a World Health Organization network that works both on the H5N1 bird flu virus and more conventional strains included in each year's flu vaccine. But its focus is expected to expand to include other emerging diseases.

Winterton says it may be possible to relocate the lab and still address security concerns. “Many hospitals and universities in London have high-level containment facilities,” he notes. The MRC may also consider other options, including using facilities already in the city or building a new lab on a separate site.

How easy it will be to move the lab may depend in large part on community response, says Edward Hammond, US director of the Sunshine Project, a nonprofit group that opposes biodefense research. Hammond notes that some facilities in the US have been stopped by local opposition, but openness may go a long way toward assuaging concerns. “Transparency must come above all,” he says.

A final proposal on the lab is expected by October, and construction on the new NIMR is slated to begin in 2009.