Special Exhibitions

Millions of SARS-CoV-2 viral genomes have been sequenced since COVID-19 began. Helping to track the evolution and spread of the pandemic in real-time, this sequencing was led by the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK). Set up with remarkable speed and foresight, in March 2020, the history of COG-UK is documented in this exhibition. Its work was pivotal to the quick detection of more transmissible and worrying variants which helped inform public health. The exhibition serves as a monument to the hard toil and sacrifices many scientists and others went through to overcome the adversities of the pandemic and save lives. Leaving behind an important legacy, the history of COG-UK will be of interest to everyone seeking to understand how to tackle future pandemics. (Credit: Cartoon by Alex Cagan)

Rising antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most pressing public health and global economic challenges the world faces today alongside COVID-19. If left unchecked, AMR could wipe out many of the advances medicine has made in recent times. One of the most disturbing aspects of AMR today is that many common infections and minor injuries, like a simple paper cut to the finger or a scratch, could become potentially fatal. What is AMR? Where does it come from and how have scientists tried to combat the problem over time? What new tools are now on the horizon that could help improve the use of antibiotics and help preserve their efficacy for the future?

Explore our extensive collection of resources about the issue, including resources designed as teaching resources.

Drug discovery and development is a very complex process. Getting a drug to market can take years, even decades, and involves many scientific, financial and regulatory hurdles. This makes drug discovery and development a highly risky and a long and expensive business. Many drugs that appear promising in the laboratory fall by the wayside in clinical trials because they prove unsafe or ineffective. A great deal of money can thus be invested by a company in a drug candidate with little return. In this exhibition we follow the complex process of drug discovery and development through the story of Seattle Genetics, a small American biotechnology company set up in 1998 to develop cancer therapeutics. As the exhibition reveals, the success of drug development is not only reliant on scientific and clinical progress. Securing enough funding and the right partners is also essential to the process.

Today monoclonal antibodies are indispensable to medicine. They are not only used as therapeutics, comprising six out of ten of the best selling drugs in the world, but are also critical to unravelling the pathways of disease and integral components of diagnostic tests. Yet, the story of how these unsung microscopic heroes came into the world and helped change healthcare remains largely untold. The journey of monoclonal antibodies all started when an Argentinian émigré called César Milstein arrived at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, the same laboratory where Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA. This exhibition tells the story of how Milstein came to develop monoclonal antibodies and demonstrated their clinical application for the first time.

A third of all new medicines introduced into the world today are monoclonal antibodies, many of which go on to become blockbuster drugs. This exhibition is the story of how one specific monoclonal antibody, the oldest humanised monoclonal antibody created with therapeutic potential, moved from the laboratory bench through to the clinic and the impact it has had on patients' lives. The antibody, which originated from the CAMbridge PATHology family of antibodies, started life in 1979 not as a therapeutic, but as a laboratory tool for understanding the immune system. Within a short time, however, the antibody, YTH66.9, was being used to improve the success of bone marrow transplants and as a treatment for leukaemia, lymphoma, vasculitis, organ transplants and multiple sclerosis. Highlighting the many twists and turns that this monoclonal antibody took over time, this exhibition explores the multitude of actors and events involved in the making of a biotechnology drug.

One of the most important tools in biotechnology and medicine today is DNA sequencing, invented by Frederick Sanger, a British biochemist. This exhibition follows the journey of Sanger starting in the 1940s when he began looking for ways to decipher the composition of proteins through to his development of DNA sequencing in the 1970s. Come see the time-consuming and painstaking steps Sanger went through to perfect the DNA sequencing technique and the many different areas of medicine where DNA sequencing is now being applied all the way from the Human Genome Project through to cancer and antimicrobial resistance.