World leading medical research and education building to be named after Bob Champion
A £19 million medical research centre is to be named after former Grand National winning jockey Bob Champion MBE. The Bob Champion Cancer Trust is the project’s biggest charitable donor.
The newly completed Bob Champion Research & Education Building will house researchers finding new treatments for diseases affecting ageing populations and a unique bio-bank facility to store DNA and tissue samples, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate education.
Based on the Norwich Research Park and operated by the University of East Anglia (UEA) in partnership with the Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital, the centre will provide state-of-the-art laboratories for researchers to explore new treatments for diseases from prostate cancer and antibiotic resistance, to musculo-skeletal and gastrointestinal diseases.
The Bob Champion Cancer Trust, set up in in 1983 after the Grand National-winning jockey beat cancer, donated £750,000 to the project, helping to take charitable funds raised by a UEA funding campaign over two years to more than £2.2m.
Bob Champion said: “We’re very excited by the prospect of the work that will be carried out within the ‘Bob Champion Research & Education Building. The Trust is looking forward to working with UEA and in particular Professor Colin Cooper and his team – this is a great step forward for our research programmes.”
Other major funders of the build include The Wolfson Foundation, which contributed £500,000 to help create The Wolfson Research Wing where UEA medical research scientists will work within the building, and Norfolk & Waveney cancer charity Big C, which gave £250,000 and will see the atrium named ‘The Big C Atrium’ in thanks.
Action Arthritis, Norwich Town Close Estate Charity and the R C Snelling Charitable Trust all pledged £100,000 each. The lecture theatre will bear the name ‘The RC Snelling lecture theatre’ whilst Action Arthritis and Norwich Town Close Estate will be recognised in the Norfolk Bone and Joint Centre for their significant contributions.
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital clinicians will work alongside the research teams led by UEA researchers including Prof Colin Cooper working on prostate cancer, and Professor Bill Fraser who will lead the Norfolk Bone and Joint Centre. The Norfolk Bone and Joint Appeal, launched in the Assembly House in Norwich at the start of building project raised over £300,000 of valuable donations and contains a state of the art bio-analysis laboratory for Prof Fraser’s nationally important work on osteoporosis.