A London consortium to establish a high resolution cryo-electron microscopy facility for research and training

London’s structural biologists are currently locked out of the most powerful microscopes in their field. The Titan Krios cryo-electron microscope can image individual proteins at atomic resolution, revealing the precise shape of molecules that drive disease or carry out essential cellular tasks. But London—home to the UK’s highest concentration of structural biologists—has only two such instruments, both reserved for researchers at the Francis Crick Institute. The rest of the city’s scientists have no rapid, local access to this technology, putting them at a competitive disadvantage internationally. This consortium brings together Imperial College London, the Institute of Cancer Research, King’s College London, and Queen Mary University London to build a shared high-resolution cryo-EM facility. The facility will serve researchers across all four institutions, enabling them to determine structures of proteins as small as 150 kilodaltons at resolutions better than 2 ångströms—a capability that could make cryo-EM the leading method for most structural biology projects. If successful, the facility will accelerate fundamental discoveries about how proteins work, how they malfunction in disease, and how drugs might be designed to fit them. It will also train the next generation of cryo-EM users, ensuring the UK remains competitive in a field that underpins modern drug development and molecular medicine.