About us

HISTORY OF THE CENTRE

The Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research is an interdisciplinary research centre embedded within the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester. The Centre was established in 1995, supported by a generous grant from the Wellcome Trust, with the long-term aims of elucidating the structure and function of extracellular matrices and cell-matrix adhesions, defining the contribution of cell-matrix interactions to human diseases, and developing approaches for preventing and treating these diseases.Initially, under the chairmanship of Professor Mike Grant, the Centre comprised 16 research groups with a total of 80 research staff.

The centre has grown considerably in the subsequent 10 years and there are currently 23 independent investigators and a total of 170 research staff within the Centre, with expertise ranging from structure determination to whole organism genetics, and molecular biophysics to molecular imaging in living cells. The Directorship of the Centre passed to Professor Martin Humphries in 2000, then to Professor Charles Streuli in late 2009.In January 2004 the Centre relocated to the new Michael Smith Building, named after a former graduate of the University of Manchester and 1993 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

This building, which was funded in part by a £15M grant from the Wellcome Trust and the UK Government, will provide outstanding accommodation for the Centre for the foreseeable future.

The new building is the first of a series of construction projects at the University of Manchester, and within three years, a majority of the researchers in the Faculties of Life Sciences will be housed in a linked series of buildings, sited at a focal point in the University's biomedical corridor, adjacent to physical sciences research, the Manchester Bioscience Incubator, the Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Facility, and the Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust.