Partnership with Tata Memorial Centre
Prof Rajendra Badwe and Prof Arnie Purushotham
King’s College London signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), Mumbai, on 19 November 2012. The MOU marks the launch of a formal partnership between TMC and King’s Health Partners Integrated Cancer Centre – one of the world’s leading academic centres that combines first class clinical care with groundbreaking research into personalised cancer treatment. Delivering affordable cancer care for an ageing global population is one of the main challenges the collaboration will address.
The partnership with TMC also signals King’s renewed commitment to developing partnerships in India in areas that the College has particular expertise – with cancer at the forefront in the medical sciences, along with neuroscience and mental health. Engagement with India forms a core part of the College’s international strategy – to develop links for research collaboration and encourage the mobility of staff and students.
King’s recently sent a large academic delegation to Mumbai and Delhi, headed by Principal Professor Sir Rick Trainor, to engage with partner organisations and pursue research opportunities in order to accelerate potential impact and beneficial outcomes for society.
The agreement between King’s and TMC will allow the two centres to pursue joint research and development opportunities and exchange of staff and students. The institutions will focus on training fellowships; exchange visits; cancers of the breast, lung, head and neck; clinical trials; cancer policy, economics, epidemiology and public health programmes.
King’s is already a world leader for research into cancer. King’s Health Partners Integrated Cancer Centre has rapidly become a pioneer in a new kind of combined care and research model that promises to accelerate the development of cancer treatments. The Centre is a unique collaboration between the institutions that comprise King’s Health Partners; namely, the hospitals that are linked to King’s College London (Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College and the South London and Maudsley Hospital) and the academic research teams in the university itself.
New technology and advances in genetics and personalised medicine are offering unprecedented targeted therapeutic opportunities for breast, prostate, lung cancer and haemato-oncology (blood diseases). The Centre is now looking to build on its position in all these areas by collaborations worldwide with leading international partners. Research teams at King’s are also keen to collaborate to find ways of more affordable cancer care, as an ageing global population and expensive new drugs and technologies are starting to place a great financial burden on society.
King's College London, has recently forged a partnership with the Tata Memorial Centre to promote research and education activities. Arnie Purushotham, Director of the King's Health Partners Integrated Cancer Centre (ICC) gives more details on the partnership and shares some insights on cancer treatment in India, in conversation with Raelene Kambli

King's College London is one of the top 30 universities in the world (2012/2013 QS international world rankings), the Sunday Times' 'University of the Year 2010/11' and the fourth oldest in England. A research-led university based in the heart of London, it has more than 24,000 students (of whom nearly 10,000 are graduate students) from 150 countries and more than 6,100 employees.
King's has an outstanding reputation for providing world-class teaching and cutting-edge research. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise for British universities, its 23 departments were ranked in the top quartile of British universities; over half of our academic staff work in departments that are in the top 10 per cent in their field in UK and can thus be classed as world leading. The college is in the top seven UK universities for research earnings and has an overall annual income of nearly £525 million.