The Department of Medicine provides high quality research, teaching and patient care.  It is the largest department in the School of Clinical Medicine, and is comprised of 12 divisions, each aligned to a clinical specialty within the NHS.  It houses 25 professors, and over 700 directly employed and affiliated members of staff and students.  The Department’s base is over 5 floors in the main building of Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and in other sites around the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, including the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research, CRUK Cancer Research Institute, West Forvie site, GSK building, Institute of Metabolic Science, Clifford Allbutt Building and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology University Research Unit. The Department currently holds research grants totalling in excess of £135m with an annual expenditure of over £13m.

The research interests of the divisions are necessarily broad, although many groups work in the general area of immunity, inflammation and infection.   The Department aims to perform high quality basic scientific as well as translational research, and to do this maximising synergy with other scientists on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and throughout the region.    Research is focused on areas of relevance to human disease, with the aim being to understand the mechanisms of disease and to deliver novel therapeutic approaches to the clinic.  The Department is greatly assisted in this by support from the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. The Department is also home to the NIHR Biomedical Research Center Cell Phenotyping Hub, which provides state of the art flow cytometry facilities.

Many members of the Department of Medicine are involved in clinical teaching.  The Department organises the weekly Staff Round, which is the main forum for academic medicine on the campus.  The Department is also involved in the supervision of a large number of graduate students, controlled by the Graduate Committee in the Graduate School of Life Sciences, and many members contribute to undergraduate teaching in the School of Biological Sciences.

Members of all divisions of the Department of Medicine are actively involved in providing patient care in the NHS.  This is critical not only for service provision but ensures that the Department’s research and teaching is constantly refocused upon the needs of patients.