Centre for Tropical and Infectious Diseases changes the skyline
Scientists at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine are preparing for a historic New Year handover of the magnificent new Centre for Tropical and Infectious Diseases (CTID).
The environmentally friendly building has been designed to make as much use of natural daylight as possible, with many of the internal walls made from glass to allow daylight to penetrate to the heart of the building.
The £23 million Centre stands adjacent to LSTM’s historic building in Pembroke Place and offers the sort of facilities which the institution’s early scientists could only dream of. Malaria alone kills more than one million people every year and grants for malaria and other insect-borne disease research in the new building include $50 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and £10 million from the European Community.
LSTM now has over £100 million of research contracts on its books, amongst those awarded this year are a $23million programme to find new drug combinations for river blindness and the disfiguring disease elephantiasis and a $4million project to tackle the Tsetse fly, carrier of human African Trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness.
LSTM has also joined with the Royal Liverpool University Hospital and the University of Liverpool to establish a new biomedical research centre to tackle infection. It is now the UK’s leading specialist research centre for microbial diseases and will ensure that Liverpool becomes a pioneer in the development of new drugs and diagnostic tools for a range of conditions such as Clostridium difficile, TB and HIV.
Director, Professor Janet Hemingway, said: "2008 promises to be one of Liverpool’s most exciting years yet as European Capital of Culture and what is taking place at LSTM will make it one of our most exciting years in terms of improving health in developing countries and leading Liverpool to become a capital of biomedical science."
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