17:08 Monday 10th December 2012
Drive BBC Radio Cambridgeshire
CHRIS MANN: The Prime Minister made a surprise visit to Cambridge today to announce £100 million boost to cancer research. The investment means three years of research money and new jobs for the county, and the possibility that yet another new scientific breakthrough will happen here. It means that up to 100,000 patients with cancer and rare diseases are to have their entire genetic code or genome mapped. And the Cambridge Cancer Research Institute is one of the facilities receiving a share of that £100 million funding the project. The Prime Minister David Cameron paid a visit to the BBC Radio Cambridgeshire studios and told the Andy Harper Show what he was announcing. (TAPE)
DAVID CAMERON: Wow. It’s complicated stuff. I mean we all I think understand that DNA is the sort of er is the code of what makes us up. And the fact is if we could try and put people’s DNA onto a database, then that would be an enormous national and medical resource that would help us to do things like crack cancer. Because if you can find out which people with what sort of DNA get what sort of cancers, then you’re a long way to cracking cancers. So the announcement today is £100 million to enable this DNA database to be built and held here in Britain. And it’s not just good for medical purposes. It will also give us a massive economic lead in an area of business, pharmaceuticals, life sciences, biotechnology, which are one of the industries of the future, and one of the industries that Britain does pretty well already. But with this, it can take us even further.
===========