Consistently rated amongst the world’s best universities, Imperial College London is a science-based institution with a reputation for excellence in teaching and research. It is made up of the faculties of Engineering, Medicine, Natural Sciences and The Business School. Overall, in THE World University Rankings 2013-4, it is third in Europe and 10th in the world.
Within the Faculty of Medicine is the National Heart and Lung Institute where the Respiratory department is one of the largest in Europeand focuses on research in several lung diseases including asthma and COPD. The NHLI hosts the MRC/Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma, the MRC-EPA Environment & Health Centre at Imperial/Kings Colleges and in the MRC-ABPI-funded COPD-MAP Consortium. In addition, two of its members co-lead the IMI-funded EU/EFPIA UBIOPRED project on systems Biology of severe asthma. About 30 clinical scientists are involved in basic and applied research in asthma and COPD at NHLI. The clinicians work at the Royal Brompton Hospital London where there are busy asthma clinics and asthma databases kept.
NHLI has maintained a high profile in terms of both basic and applied research in the field of asthma, and publications in the literature on asthma from NHLI have been most highly cited. Many new treatments for asthma have been pioneered from these labs and in our associated hospital. Recently, there has been an interest in development of new inhalers for treating respiratory disorders including asthma and COPD.