Professor Claudia Langenberg from Queen Mary University of London joins 'Knowledge Cities'

Above: Professor Claudia Langenberg, Director of Queen Mary University of London's Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (Image courtesy of BIH)

Future Cities Forum is delighted that Professor Claudia Langenberg will be contributing to our 'Knowledge Cities' event being held at Tower Hamlets Town Hall this month, on the site of the former 18th century Royal London Hospital. Claudia is Director of Queen Mary University of London's Precision Healthcare University Research Institute (PHURI) and Professor of Computational Medicine at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité Universitätsmedizin, Germany.

PHURI is a cross-faculty institute that builds on the powerful partnership between Queen Mary and Barts NHS Trust. It is part of the organisations’ shared focus on accelerating the latest healthcare innovations from bench to bedside to deliver better health for all.

PHURI drives research to better understand how disease impacts different patient groups and works in close partnership with the Trust to use real-world clinical data to drive the development and targeted prescription of treatments based on patients’ needs. This is helping to build a stronger health service for the people of East London, the UK and the world.

PHURI is co-located with DERI in Empire House on the Whitechapel Campus until their dedicated building is finalised.

Professor Langenberg joined Queen Mary from Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) where she was a Professor of Computational Medicine, and the University of Cambridge where she was the Medical Research Council (MRC) Investigator and Programme Leader at the MRC Epidemiology Unit. Professor Langenberg is also a public health clinician by training, and her research is focused on the genetic basis of metabolic control.

Professor Langenberg, Director of the Precision Health University Research Institute, said of her appointment at QMUL:

“Every patient deserves a precise diagnosis that enables targeted therapy and an informed answer to the simple question ‘how serious is my problem, doctor?’. Currently, this isn’t the case for many patients.

"We know that population groups in East London are underrepresented in research, and we want to change this. The creation of the PHURI allows us to focus on research that matters to our local population, treat patients according to their specific diagnosis, and generate knowledge that helps to achieve precision health care and better health for all. ‘From Whitechapel to the world’ is a phrase that immediately inspired me to take on this exciting opportunity.”

‘Knowledge Cities’ on 23 November 2023 will continue Future Cities Forum’s successful ‘Science Cities’ series, which has been held this year at St John’s College Oxford, Newnham College Cambridge, in London at Lambeth Palace Library and at Here East in Stratford. We are delighted to be hosted by London Borough of Tower Hamlets in November at the newly restored Royal London Hospital for a discussion on ‘Knowledge Cities’.

Future Cities Forum been running its 'Science cities' series since 2018, starting with David Probert discussing 'Project Oriel' when he was CEO at Moorfields, and John Anderson, Director of Financial Strategy at Imperial College London (talking at White City Place on the making of Imperial West) - looking at how to create the best places for R&D - across life sciences and technology - and how to develop and open up modern hospital and university campuses so they integrate better with their host cities and communities. A wide range of investors, hospital trusts and universities have taken part including Wellcome, Cambridge University Health Partners, AstraZeneca, the Karolinska Institutet, Health Innovation Manchester and Oxford University Development.

We have also discussed, at our Oxford and Cambridge forums, the development of urban labs, located in former shopping centres such as the Clarendon Centre by Cornmarket in Oxford - and the appeal for scientists and life sciences businesses to be in vibrant districts.

In Whitechapel, Barts Life Sciences has a vision - based on the adjacent location of the Royal London Hospital and the Queen Mary Biosciences Innovation Centre - to transform the future of healthcare, not only for the people of London and the UK, but globally.

Its ultimate ambition is to build a new life sciences campus that will provide a space for researchers, scientists, and clinicians to work directly alongside businesses and entrepreneurs, creating the healthcare solutions of tomorrow. This will allow Barts Life Sciences to share ground-breaking ideas, develop new ways of working, improve health outcomes, and reduce the costs faced by health systems.