The Christie Charity
The Paterson Building is one of the world’s leading cancer research centres. Together, 700 experts are working to double the number of people on clinical trials by 2030 and improve the lives of people with cancer from across the North West and beyond.
The first iteration of the Paterson first opened its doors on The Christie site in Withington back in 1966 and it was a beacon of scientific progress until a fire destroyed it back in 2017.
We, along with our partners in the Manchester Cancer Research Centre, Cancer Research UK and The University of Manchester, invested £150m in a state-of-the-art building, a new beacon of scientific progress for the twenty-first century and beyond, which is bringing hope to those with cancer and their loved ones.
Together, a multidisciplinary team of scientists, researchers, clinicians, and operational staff – practising what is known as ‘team science’ – are delivering clinical trials covering everything from prevention and novel treatments to living with and beyond cancer. The building is attached to The Christie itself meaning samples can get to the lab within minutes.
Pioneering personalised medicine
A central component of the building is the Cancer Research UK National Biomarker Centre. Their focus is on biomarkers* – genes, proteins and other cancer-associated molecules – to aid in early cancer detection and diagnosis, and biomarkers that enable personalised management of a patient’s cancer, to determine which therapy will bring the most benefit.
A world-leading centre for radiotherapy and surgery
The Paterson is Manchester’s scientific headquarters for the Alliance for Early Cancer Detection and houses a team focused on global genomics, or how cancer presents differently in people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
The Christie is the largest provider of radiotherapy in the NHS, and the new research centre is home to a Cancer Research UK RadNet-supported programme that is looking at, among other things, how the immune system can be harnessed to improve radiotherapy cures.
The Paterson also has a surgical research centre, something very few cancer centres have. This multi-disciplinary team of experts is working on cutting-edge research in surgery, anaesthesia, critical care and acute oncology.
Bringing the brightest minds together
The centre complements the partnership’s ‘team’ science in the neighbouring Oglesby Cancer Research Building (OCRB) and will help increase the critical mass of research activity on The Christie site.
* Scientists can use biomarkers to do several things: to detect cancer early when there is more chance of cure, to identify a person’s tumour type, to predict what treatment might be best for a patient, to monitor the cancer to see whether a treatment is working, and to anticipate when a tumour might become resistant to a particular treatment, so they can change treatment.