Ceiling patterns representing cell division and a colour scheme inspired by chromosome painting are among the decorative features of the new Cancer Institute at University College London (UCL). The £40-million (US$84-million) building was partially funded by the childhood cancer charity Children with Leukaemia, the Wolfson Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies.

The institute nestles between the new University College Hospital and the Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, with which it will share several core services, including a microarray facility, a proteomics unit, and imaging and transgenesis suites.

The institute will accommodate 300 scientists, doubling the number working on cancer at UCL. With excellent clinical resources nearby, including the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, tumour banks and one of the largest bone-marrow transplant programmes in Europe, the UCL Cancer Institute hopes to boost basic and translational research in the area.

Director Chris Boshoff and his colleagues aim to investigate haematological malignancies, brain cancer, adolescent and young-adult cancers, and head, neck and lung cancers. “We will focus on cancer types that aren't always at the top of other people's priorities,” says Boshoff.

Over the next two years, Boshoff will recruit up to six promising early-career scientists to their first group-leader position. “We can help them establish their laboratory and then they can start their careers with us,” he says.

Among the 180 scientists already there, Boshoff has secured some top talent — including leaders in genomics, brain surgery and paediatric and adolescent cancer biology — from other institutions, such as the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and the University of California, San Francisco.

Canadian recruit Poul Sorensen, a clinician-scientist and expert in childhood cancers, says that the funding and the leadership helped lure him overseas.

“A lot of people talk about translational research, but my feeling is the people at the UCL Cancer Institute really understand what it means,” he says. “Those driving the institute are clinician-scientists with a strong background in basic science. You need that combination to have the vision to develop new strategies for cancer treatment.”