The story of Photo 51 has long been shadowed by a persistent narrative: that the image was shown, without Franklin’s knowledge, to James Watson in early 1953, and that Watson and Francis Crick then raced ahead to build their double-helical model while Franklin herself supposedly missed what her own photograph meant. Watson later wrote that seeing the photograph helped him and Crick develop their model. Subsequent accounts, however, often portrayed Franklin as having failed to grasp the importance of the image sitting in her own laboratory. The new research argues that this version of events does not hold up against the historical record.

To understand why, it helps to look at the technical details of how the photograph was made. In 1952, Franklin and her graduate student Raymond Gosling took Photo 51 at King’s College London by firing X-rays at DNA and recording the pattern created when the X-rays scattered from the molecules. The resulting X-shaped pattern of dark spots and smears was the signature of a helix: the regular, repeating arrangement of scattering units in a spiral produces exactly that kind of crossed pattern of reflections. The sharper and cleaner the pattern, the more precise the measurements that can be extracted from it, including the dimensions and geometry of the helix.

The crucial new insight concerns Photo 49, the earlier image that preceded Photo 51. Photo 49 contained a blemish caused by a component inside the X-ray camera slipping across the film and obscuring part of the image. Despite this defect, Franklin was able to extract useful information from the photograph and use it to determine key features of the structure of the DNA molecule. At that stage, she had not yet established exactly how many strands made up the DNA molecule, whether it was a single, double or triple helix. But the research shows that she already knew the X-ray pattern could provide important information about DNA’s helical structure, and that a better image would yield better answers.

That is precisely why Photo 51 exists. Rather than being an accidental or routine exposure, it was a deliberate, carefully planned attempt to produce a cleaner version of the pattern Franklin had already begun to interpret. The blemish on Photo 49 had degraded part of the data, so she and Gosling set out to capture a higher-quality repeat. The result was the crisp, striking X-pattern that has since become one of the most reproduced images in science. Seen this way, Photo 51 is not evidence of a missed opportunity but of a scientist methodically refining her experiment to squeeze more information out of her samples.

The researchers reached their conclusions through an unusually thorough reconstruction of the experimental record. They examined laboratory notebooks, manuscripts, photographs and other historical documents held in collections in Philadelphia, Cambridge and London. They also studied Franklin’s original X-ray camera and photographic slides preserved in the archives of King’s College London, allowing them to understand the technical conditions under which the images were produced. By combining the history of the instruments with the history of the ideas, they could piece together why Photo 51 was taken and what Franklin already understood when she took it.

The collaboration itself began with an archival acquisition. Alistair Sponsel, oral historian and curator of life sciences at the Science History Institute, started re-examining Franklin’s DNA research in 2025 after the institute acquired the History of Molecular Biology Collection from the J. Craig Venter Institute. The collection includes Franklin’s own copy of Photo 51, alongside notebooks, correspondence, photographs and other material documenting the history of molecular biology. Sponsel’s research led him to archives in the United Kingdom, including those of King’s College London, where Franklin and Gosling carried out their DNA work. There he joined forces with Brian Sutton, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biophysics at King’s, who had long been interested in the X-ray crystallographic studies of DNA carried out by his predecessors at the college.

Sutton described how the partnership changed his own view of the famous image. He noted that he had been accompanying visitors to the King’s College Archives over many years, and that the highlight and focus of attention was always the original glass negative of Photograph 51. Just over a year ago, he was introduced to Sponsel, a historian of science visiting the Archive, and they very quickly realised that they looked at Photograph 51 in different ways, and that together they might better understand exactly why she and Gosling took it, and in particular the importance of Photograph 49. He described it as exciting to see Photograph 51 in a different light.

Sponsel, for his part, emphasised how the two researchers, coming from different disciplinary backgrounds, converged on the same questions. He said that he and Sutton were each intrigued by the same features of Photo 51 and wanted a deeper understanding of why the image looked the way it did. After studying so many documents and artifacts together, he said, they were excited to realise they shared a new understanding, not just of how the photograph was made, but of why Franklin had been motivated to take Photo 51 in the first place. He added that they had fun working together and learning to see these original sources through each other’s eyes.

The researchers are careful to say that their findings do not diminish the importance of Watson and Crick’s work in developing the double-helix model. What the study provides instead is a fuller picture of how Franklin’s own experimental work contributed to understanding DNA’s structure, and evidence that she fully appreciated the significance of her work, in particular Photo 51. The study also highlights a broader methodological point: understanding the technical details of how scientific experiments are carried out is essential when reconstructing the history of major discoveries. Without knowing how an X-ray camera worked, how a blemish on film could obscure data, and why a scientist would repeat an exposure, the historical record can be misread in ways that distort who understood what, and when.

The archival dimension of the work is central to its significance. Dr Alexandra Eveleigh, Head of Archives at King’s College London, noted that the King’s Archives preserve photographs, laboratory records, correspondence and other original materials that provide a direct connection to the pioneering scientific research carried out at the university. In this study, she said, archives were used as evidence to re-examine how, when and why the famous Photo 51 came to be produced, revealing the structure of DNA. This, she argued, illustrates the vital role of archives in the history of science: by preserving the original record, they allow established accounts to be revisited and refined, leading to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of how major scientific discoveries are made and of the contributions of the people behind them.

For decades, the story of the double helix has been told as a drama of insight and oversight, with Franklin cast as the brilliant experimentalist who came so close and yet somehow fell short. The new research replaces that drama with something more precise and, in its way, more impressive: a scientist who read a flawed photograph, extracted real structural information from it, recognised what a cleaner image could reveal, and deliberately set out to make one. Photo 51 was not a moment of luck that slipped through her fingers. It was the product of her own understanding, and the historical record, carefully re-read, now says so.

Subject of Research: Historical analysis of Rosalind Franklin's X-ray diffraction photographs of DNA and her role in determining its helical structure

Article Title: Rosalind Franklin deliberately created ‘Photo 51’ after using an earlier image to uncover features of DNA’s helical structure

Article References: Rosalind Franklin deliberately created ‘Photo 51’ after using an earlier image to uncover features of DNA’s helical structure. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: Rosalind Franklin, Photo 51, Photo 49, DNA, double helix, X-ray crystallography, history of science, King's College London, Science History Institute, James Watson, Francis Crick, Raymond Gosling

The intervention, abbreviated FREED-M, was developed by researchers at King’s College London and collaborators as an online companion to FREED, which stands for First Episode Rapid Early Intervention for Eating Disorders. The original FREED service was built on a simple clinical insight: the earlier an eating disorder is identified and treated, the better the chances of a full recovery. But services can only treat the people who reach them, and many young adults aged 16 to 25 delay seeking help for months or years, often because they are unsure whether their difficulties are serious enough, feel ashamed, or simply do not know where to start. FREED-M was designed to lower those barriers, providing a self-guided, mobile-optimized experience that encourages users to recognize their difficulties and take early steps toward professional support.

To understand whether the tool actually works the way its designers hoped, the research team embedded a qualitative study within a larger feasibility trial. Of the 72 participants who completed the trial, eleven young people volunteered for optional semi-structured interviews about their experiences using FREED-M and taking part in the study. The interviewees had a mean age of 22.45 years, and 92 percent were female, a demographic profile that reflects the known epidemiology of eating disorders in young adulthood. The researchers then analyzed the interview transcripts using reflexive thematic analysis, a qualitative method in which researchers actively examine how their own perspectives shape the identification of patterns in the data, rather than treating themes as if they simply emerge on their own.

The analysis yielded five key themes, and together they sketch a remarkably coherent picture of what a digital intervention must do to move a young person from silent worry toward help-seeking. The first theme was supporting awareness and early steps towards behavioural change. Participants described how using FREED-M helped them name and acknowledge difficulties with eating that they had previously minimized or explained away. In clinical terms, the tool appeared to function as a mirror, allowing users to see their own patterns reflected in structured content and to recognize that those patterns were significant enough to warrant attention. That moment of recognition is often described as the hinge on which early intervention turns, because a person cannot seek help for a problem they have not yet admitted to having.

The second theme captured a subtle psychological balancing act: balancing self-exploration with orientation towards disclosure to others. Participants valued the fact that FREED-M allowed them to explore their eating difficulties privately and independently, at their own pace and without the pressure of a clinical appointment. At the same time, the intervention did not leave them stranded in that private space. It actively oriented them toward telling other people, whether friends, family members, or professionals, about what they were going through. This dual structure matters because autonomy and connection are often in tension for young people with eating disorders. Many fear that seeking help means surrendering control, and a tool that frames disclosure as something the user chooses, rather than something imposed on them, appears to soften that fear.

The third theme, facilitating informational exposure whilst holding psychological safety, addresses one of the central design challenges in digital mental health. Information about eating disorders is abundant online, but much of it is unregulated, and some of it can be actively harmful, reinforcing disordered thinking rather than challenging it. Participants in this study reported that FREED-M provided information about eating disorders in a way that felt safe, accessible, and carefully calibrated. The intervention exposed them to facts about their condition without overwhelming them or triggering the competitive, shame-laden comparisons that can flourish in less structured online environments. Holding that psychological safety while still delivering substantive psychoeducation is a technical achievement, and it suggests that the tone, pacing, and framing of digital content can matter as much as its accuracy.

The fourth theme focused on the mechanics of self-assessment: enabling structured self-reflection through low-burden assessment. Digital interventions typically ask users to complete questionnaires, and poorly designed assessment can feel like an interrogation or an administrative chore that drives people away. Participants described FREED-M’s assessment components as low-burden, meaning they demanded relatively little effort or emotional cost while still producing meaningful structure for reflection. Structured self-reflection of this kind serves a dual purpose. For the user, it converts vague distress into articulated insight, which is a prerequisite for change. For researchers and clinicians, it generates data that can guide the intervention’s future development and, eventually, its evaluation in a full randomized controlled trial.

The fifth theme was perhaps the most practical: supporting engagement through an accessible, attractive and user-friendly design. Participants spoke positively about the look and feel of the platform, describing it as accessible and attractive. In the crowded landscape of health apps, where abandonment rates are notoriously high, design is not a cosmetic concern but a clinical one. An intervention that a young person finds pleasant to open has a fundamentally different trajectory from one that feels like a medical form. The researchers note that these engagement findings will directly inform future iterations of FREED-M, an iterative development model that is increasingly seen as best practice in digital health, where tools are refined through repeated cycles of user feedback before being tested at scale.

It is important to read these findings with appropriate scientific caution. This was a qualitative study with eleven interviewees, all drawn from people who had already completed a feasibility trial, and its purpose was not to prove that FREED-M reduces time to treatment or improves clinical outcomes. Qualitative work of this kind answers a different and equally important question: not whether an intervention works, but how it is experienced and which mechanisms plausibly drive its effects. The authors are explicit that the results will be used to inform future iterations of the intervention and its evaluation via a randomized controlled trial, the design that will ultimately determine whether FREED-M changes real-world help-seeking behavior. The feasibility trial itself, with its 72 completers, was a necessary stepping stone toward that larger test, and the interview study adds the explanatory texture that trial statistics alone cannot provide.

Even so, the study arrives at a moment of genuine momentum in early intervention for eating disorders. The work was supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research under its Research for Patient Benefit scheme, with additional support from the Medical Research Council and partner councils through the EDIFY programme and related networks, and it was delivered through the NIHR Maudsley Biomedical Research Centre. That infrastructure reflects a broader policy recognition that eating disorders are common among young people aged 16 to 25, that delays in help-seeking carry measurable costs in both human and economic terms, and that digital tools may reach people whom traditional services miss. If the planned randomized controlled trial confirms what these young interviewees described, a smartphone intervention that helps them recognize their difficulties, explore them safely, and move toward disclosure and professional support, then FREED-Mobile could become a meaningful bridge between the quiet onset of an eating disorder and the first conversation that begins recovery. For a condition in which every month of delay can deepen the illness, that bridge may prove to be one of the most consequential pieces of software in mental health care.

Subject of Research: Young adults' experiences of using the FREED-Mobile digital intervention to facilitate early help-seeking for eating disorders

Article Title: Young adults’ experiences of using FREED-Mobile, a smartphone friendly intervention designed to facilitate help-seeking for eating disorders

Article References: Potterton, R., Sharpe, H., Allen, K. L., Goldsmith, K., Lawrence, V., Byford, S., Monssen, D., Davies, M. R., Grycuk, L., Prasad, V., Popat, P., Mountford, V., McNeil, S., Grant, N., Glennon, D., Brown, A., & Schmidt, U. (2026). Young adults’ experiences of using FREED-Mobile, a smartphone friendly intervention designed to facilitate help-seeking for eating disorders. Journal of Eating Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40337-026-01791-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40337-026-01791-8

Keywords: eating disorders, early intervention, FREED-Mobile, digital mental health, help-seeking, young adults, smartphone intervention, reflexive thematic analysis, feasibility trial, psychoeducation, King's College London, Journal of Eating Disorders

The central finding is stark. Across 23 categories of ecosystem services and functions, most of the benefits that nature provides to humanity rose steadily as biodiversity increased, rather than levelling off once a handful of species were present. This pattern directly undermines the concept of functional redundancy, the long-standing assumption that species can readily substitute for one another, so that moderate losses of diversity do little measurable harm. Instead, the data show that ecological benefits keep climbing with every additional unit of diversity, which means, conversely, that they keep declining with every species lost. The comfortable buffer that conservation planning has often relied upon appears, in most cases, to be largely an illusion.

Dr Emma Moffett, the study’s lead author and a lecturer in geography at King’s College London, said the results challenge a deeply embedded assumption. Our findings challenge the comfortable assumption that ecosystems carry plenty of back-up, so losing a species here and there doesn’t change much, she explained. Across most of the ecosystem benefits the team examined, the data simply do not support that view. Because the ecological benefits continue to climb as diversity rises, they are falling as species disappear, and the consequences are likely to accumulate quietly until they become difficult to reverse. The implication for food security and climate protection is considerable, since diverse ecosystems underpin pollination, water purification, carbon storage and natural pest control, all services on which human societies depend daily.

Perhaps the most striking single result concerns the ocean. Ocean carbon sequestration, the process by which carbon dioxide is captured from the atmosphere and stored in marine waters and sediments, showed by far the strongest positive response to biodiversity of any service the researchers measured. This suggests that so-called blue carbon sinks, the ocean and coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs, saltmarshes and mangroves that draw down atmospheric carbon, depend critically on sustaining diverse marine communities, from phytoplankton at the base of the food web to the microbial networks that help pump carbon into deep water. If those communities are simplified by warming, acidification or overfishing, the ocean’s capacity to buffer climate change may weaken in ways that current models do not capture.

The authors are careful to note that the ocean result, while dramatic, rests on a comparatively small number of datasets, and they identify it as an urgent gap in current knowledge. Dr Moffett described the finding as one that stopped the team in its tracks. Carbon capture at sea responded to biodiversity more strongly than anything else measured in the analysis, she said, and yet it remains one of the least studied areas the team encountered. If the world is counting on blue carbon to help address climate change, she argued, marine life cannot be treated as an afterthought. The mismatch between the importance of the service and the paucity of data supporting it is itself a call to action for the research community.

Not every ecosystem service proved equally sensitive to diversity loss, and the exceptions are instructive. Protection against natural hazards such as coastal flooding and erosion was relatively insensitive to biodiversity overall, because this service often depends on one or two foundational species rather than on a broad portfolio of contributors. The shrubs that stabilise sand dunes, for example, deliver most of the protective benefit regardless of how many other species share the habitat. The authors argue that conservation strategy must therefore balance two distinct goals: maintaining overall diversity to preserve the many services that scale with it, and safeguarding irreplaceable foundational species whose loss would remove a single critical function outright.

Dr Will Pearse, an Associate Professor in Evolutionary Ecology in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, emphasised the practical power of the new synthesis. Biodiversity has long been known to support humanity through food, clean water, clean air and many other ecosystem services, he noted, but the model developed by the team delivers something more precise: a global picture that allows the benefits of biodiversity to be predicted anywhere on Earth. That predictive capability, he argued, makes it easier than ever to recognise those benefits and to take them into account in planning and decision-making. The full database and the model’s forecasts across all 23 categories of ecosystem services and functions have been made publicly available to support policy and planning at every scale.

The team did not stop at describing the present. They linked their database to biodiversity projections under the socioeconomic scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, allowing them to look ahead at how ecosystem services might fare under different development pathways. One projection stands out for its immediate relevance to agriculture: biological pest control on farmland, delivered free of charge by the natural enemies of crop pests, declines under a fossil-fuel-driven development path compared with a scenario involving less fossil fuel use. The sharpest losses are projected for countries experiencing rapid population growth and lower levels of development, precisely the places least equipped to replace a free ecological service with costly chemical alternatives.

The technical achievement underlying these conclusions lies in the scale and consistency of the synthesis. By harmonising data from hundreds of studies across four broad ecosystem types, the researchers were able to test whether the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, often demonstrated in small-scale experiments, holds at global scope and across real-world gradients of species loss. The answer, in most service categories, is that it does, and that the relationship is closer to a steady climb than to a plateau. That shape matters enormously for policy: if benefits saturated quickly, moderate biodiversity loss would be tolerable, but a steadily rising curve means every increment of loss carries a measurable cost in pollination, carbon storage, water quality and pest suppression.

For a world negotiating how much habitat it can afford to lose, the study reframes the question. The assumption of plentiful ecological back-up has allowed biodiversity loss to be treated as a secondary concern, something to be addressed once more urgent priorities are met. The new evidence suggests that the margin for error is much narrower than believed, and that the ocean, the planet’s largest carbon reservoir, may be the most biodiversity-dependent and least understood component of the entire system. As the authors make clear, the database and forecasts are now public, giving governments and planners the tools to quantify what is at stake. What remains is the political will to act on a finding that is, in essence, a warning: nature’s resilience has been overestimated, and the services it quietly provides are being spent faster than they can be replaced.

Subject of Research: Global synthesis of biodiversity-ecosystem service relationships across land, freshwater and marine environments

Article Title: Nature’s capacity to ‘bounce-back’ when species are lost vastly overestimated

Article References: Nature’s capacity to ‘bounce-back’ when species are lost vastly overestimated. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: biodiversity, ecosystem services, functional redundancy, blue carbon, ocean carbon sequestration, Nature Ecology & Evolution, King's College London, Imperial College London, climate change, pest control, conservation, IPCC scenarios

The findings come from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, the largest long-term investigation of brain development and child health in the United States, run across 21 research sites. Within that cohort, the team tracked 5,515 adolescents who wore Fitbit devices for three weeks around the age of 11 to 12. Rather than relying on questionnaires asking young people how active they thought they were, the researchers captured habitual activity objectively through the wearables, an approach widely considered more reliable than the self-report methods on which most previous studies in this field have depended.

A year after the step counts were recorded, the researchers assessed the participants’ mental health using the Child Behaviour Checklist, a well-established questionnaire completed by both the young people and their parents. The instrument measures a broad range of symptoms, including anxiety, low mood and behavioural difficulties. When the team compared each teenager’s average daily step count against their later symptom scores, a clear pattern emerged: the more adolescents walked, the fewer mental health problems they reported a year later.

The gradient was striking. Teenagers who averaged fewer than 5,000 steps a day showed the most symptoms. Those averaging around 8,000 steps had fewer, and those reaching 12,000 or more had the fewest of all. Crucially, the researchers could detect no point within the observed range at which the benefit levelled off, suggesting that within this population even relatively high levels of everyday walking were associated with continued gains. Every extra walk to school, kickabout in the park or trip to the shops may, on this evidence, be doing more for teenage mental health than previously appreciated.

The study went a step further than most observational work by probing the biology that might underlie the association. Using the neuroimaging data available through the ABCD cohort, the researchers found that adolescents with the highest step counts also showed slightly thicker brain tissue in two regions involved in movement and in regulating emotion. These structural differences helped explain part of the link between step counts and better mental health, offering a tentative window into the mechanisms connecting physical activity and psychological wellbeing during a critical period of brain maturation.

Qingyang Li, lead author of the study, said the findings point researchers toward specific neural territory to explore next. “We’re starting to understand parts of the brain that might be involved in the link between daily steps and young people’s mental health,” Li said. “It’s preliminary, but it gives us a clearer idea of where to look next.” The involvement of brain areas tied to both motor function and emotional regulation fits with broader theories that movement and mood are deeply intertwined in the developing brain.

Dr Divyangana Rakesh, Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience and Psychology at King’s College London and senior author of the study, emphasised the practical significance of the results. “This study gives us some of the clearest evidence yet that even an everyday, low-cost, accessible measure of physical activity like daily step count is tied to how adolescent brains and mental health develop,” she said. “What’s striking is that we don’t see this benefit levelling off in the observed range, even among the most active young people in our sample.”

Dr Amanda Paluch, Associate Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, stressed that the message for families is one of incremental gains rather than dramatic intervention. “Adolescence is a key period for brain development and mental health, so it’s encouraging to see that physical activity’s benefits extend to both,” she said. “It is not an all-or-nothing situation. Adolescents don’t need to be elite athletes to benefit. 1,000 to 2,000 higher daily step increments, from any starting point, was associated with better brain structure and mental health outcomes, and that beneficial association keeps building from there.”

Paluch added that the goal should be finding realistic, sustainable ways for young people to move more, through everyday opportunities such as walking to school, active play and activities children genuinely enjoy, so that the benefits are accessible wherever an adolescent is starting from. Notably, the study found no association between step count and academic performance, indicating that the apparent benefits of walking in this age group are confined to brain structure and mental health rather than extending to school achievement, at least over the one-year window examined.

As with all observational research, caution is warranted. The study cannot prove that walking more directly improves mental health; it remains possible that adolescents with fewer psychological problems are simply more inclined to be active in the first place. Importantly, however, the association held even after the researchers accounted for the participants’ earlier mental health problems, strengthening the case that activity may play a protective role. The brain differences observed were small in magnitude, and few adolescents in the sample recorded extremely high step counts, so it is not yet clear whether the pattern continues beyond the range measured. Even so, the combination of objective activity tracking, a very large sample, longitudinal follow-up and converging neuroimaging evidence makes this one of the most compelling demonstrations to date that something as ordinary as putting one foot in front of the other may help shape the developing adolescent mind.

Subject of Research: The relationship between daily physical activity, adolescent brain structure and mental health

Article Title: Higher daily step counts linked to fewer mental health problems in early adolescence, study finds

Article References: Higher daily step counts linked to fewer mental health problems in early adolescence, study finds. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: adolescent mental health, physical activity, step count, brain development, ABCD Study, wearables, Child Behaviour Checklist, JAMA Network Open, King's College London, observational study, neuroimaging, public health

The scale and ambition of the collaboration are considerable. ARC London will be hosted by Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, with its leadership team drawn from three of the capital’s most research-intensive institutions: King’s College London, University College London and Imperial College London. The wider partnership spans 20 organisations, including members of King’s Health Partners, the academic health sciences centre that brings together King’s College London with Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts. This breadth is deliberate. The challenges facing modern health and social care, from an ageing population living with multiple long-term conditions to the pressures of rising demand and constrained budgets, are too complex for any single institution or discipline to solve alone.

ARC London does not operate in isolation. It joins a national network of 11 Applied Research Collaborations spread across England, each funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research as part of a £170 million investment over five years. The ARCs work together, sharing expertise and learning to support research and implementation at scale, so that innovations proven in one region can be adapted and adopted elsewhere. Within this network, ARC London’s role is distinctive: it serves a city of extraordinary diversity, where profound health inequalities sit alongside world-leading biomedical science, and where the lessons learned can be relevant to urban populations across the country and beyond.

The collaboration has organised its work around four research themes, each addressing a major challenge facing the health and social care sectors. The first, neighbourhood health and social care, focuses on supporting independent living, reducing emergency hospital visits and better helping people with multiple health and care needs throughout their lives. This theme reflects a growing recognition, both in the United Kingdom and internationally, that the health of populations is shaped less in hospitals than in the neighbourhoods where people live, work and age, and that strengthening community-based care can prevent crises before they require emergency intervention.

The second theme concentrates on prevention and early intervention in people with major conditions, including cardiovascular, renal and metabolic disease and mental ill health. These groups of conditions account for a substantial share of the burden of disease in London and across the United Kingdom, and their origins often lie years or decades before diagnosis. By identifying risk earlier and intervening sooner, researchers aim to shift the balance of the health system from reactive treatment towards proactive prevention, a direction that aligns closely with the current strategic focus of the NHS.

The third theme addresses productivity and economic growth, with the goal of supporting the highest quality health and care services at an affordable cost. In a health system facing sustained financial pressure, productivity is not simply a matter of doing more with less; it is about finding smarter models of care, better use of the workforce and more efficient pathways that maintain or improve quality while releasing resources. The fourth theme, data sciences for healthcare, underpins much of this ambition. Advanced analysis of health and care data can help understand people’s needs earlier, prevent illness and improve care, and London’s concentration of data science expertise makes it well placed to lead in this field.

King’s College London brings a distinctive set of strengths to the partnership. The university contributes expertise in population health, data science and social science, alongside long-standing experience in major health challenges including mental health, maternal and child health, cardiometabolic disease and respiratory disease. This combination matters because the questions ARC London will tackle are not purely biomedical. They involve how services are organised, how people behave, how policies are designed and how evidence moves into practice. Social science and population health perspectives are essential for understanding why effective interventions sometimes fail to reach the people who need them most, and for designing research that reflects the realities of diverse urban communities.

The leadership team reflects the three-way institutional partnership. Professor Laura Shallcross of University College London serves as Director of ARC London, with Dr Ana Luisa Neves of Imperial College London as Deputy Director. King’s College London’s role is embodied by Ingrid Wolfe, Professor of Paediatrics and Child Population Health at King’s College London and Guy’s and St Thomas’, who serves as Co-Director. Wolfe has described the moment as a golden opportunity to deliver research that will genuinely improve outcomes for patients and the public, and has emphasised that at a time when the NHS is focused on prevention, neighbourhood care and innovation, ARC London provides a unique opportunity to generate the evidence needed to support lasting transformation across health and social care.

One of the most scientifically demanding areas of the collaboration concerns people living with multiple long-term conditions, sometimes called multimorbidity. Mieke Van Hemelrijck, Professor in Cancer Epidemiology at King’s College London, is leading work focused on adults in this group. Her argument is a compelling one for the future of health research: multiple long-term conditions are inherently complex, so no single discipline or disease area can address them alone. Combining expertise from across London, spanning a wide range of diseases, populations and research approaches, will allow researchers to ask more ambitious questions and translate research into greater impact for patients and the NHS. King’s researchers are also leading collaboration across the ARC’s themes to benefit children and young people, a population whose health trajectories are shaped by early experiences and whose needs often fall between adult and paediatric services.

Research alone, however rigorous, does not change systems. ARC London has therefore built translation into its structure from the outset. The King’s Policy Institute is supporting the collaboration’s efforts to connect research findings to improvements in policy and practice, helping ensure that evidence reaches the decision-makers who shape services. The partnership will also respond to the issues that matter most to people living with the greatest burden of disease in London and beyond, and it will address health inequalities by embedding inclusive approaches across all projects and programmes. The aim is that findings are relevant for a broad and diverse population, and that any resulting interventions can be successfully delivered to the people who need them most, rather than benefiting only those easiest to reach.

The collaboration’s reach extends further still. ARC London will partner with the other NIHR Applied Research Collaborations, with NIHR infrastructure across London and with partners in the life sciences sector, creating collaborations intended to bring innovative new medicines, technologies and models of care into practice sooner. Professor Marian Knight, Scientific Director for NIHR Infrastructure, has described the new London ARC as playing a vital role in turning research into real-world improvements in health and care, generating evidence across the capital that benefits communities nationwide, and framing the bringing together of partners from every corner of London as a unique opportunity to collaborate, innovate, drive economic growth and deliver meaningful impact for patients. For a city whose health and care services serve millions of people from every background, the promise of research that is designed from the beginning to be inclusive, practical and translatable represents a significant step forward, and the coming five years will show how far that promise can be realised.

Subject of Research: A £22 million London-wide applied research partnership translating health and social care research into practice

Article Title: King’s College London joins London-wide partnership awarded £22 million to transform health and social care through research

Article References: King’s College London joins London-wide partnership awarded £22 million to transform health and social care through research. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: NIHR, Applied Research Collaboration, King's College London, health and social care, NHS, health inequalities, multimorbidity, data science, prevention, neighbourhood health, London, research funding

The study focused on sarbecoviruses, the specific sub-group of coronaviruses that includes both SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. Researchers examined how these viruses interact with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2, or ACE2, the cellular receptor that many coronaviruses utilize to enter host cells. By investigating the ability of various bat coronaviruses to use ACE2 proteins from a broad spectrum of species, the team aimed to understand the host range of these viruses. This host range is a key determinant of spillover risk, as viruses capable of infecting a wide variety of animals are generally considered more likely to jump to humans.

The team analyzed fifteen representative bat coronavirus spike proteins using libraries of ACE2 receptors derived from thirty-four different species. These species included humans, livestock, rodents, and animals previously proposed as intermediate hosts in the transmission chain. The analysis revealed a distinct pattern in receptor usage among the different evolutionary groups of bat sarbecoviruses. Specifically, the researchers identified so-called generalist sarbecoviruses, which can utilize ACE2 receptors from many different species, and found that these were largely confined to the same evolutionary lineage as SARS-CoV-2.

Dr. Nazia Thakur, a postdoctoral scientist at Pirbright and the lead author of the study, explained that the bat coronaviruses currently considered most likely to spill over into humans are also the most likely to be recognized by existing COVID-19 immunity. She noted that while the risk of spillover can never be entirely eliminated, the global exposure to SARS-CoV-2 may have created a more robust immune defense against related viruses. This finding implies that the immune systems of many people are already primed to recognize and neutralize potential future pathogens that share structural similarities with the virus that caused the current pandemic.

The research also highlighted the dynamic nature of viral evolution during the pandemic. The team investigated how the host range of SARS-CoV-2 itself has changed over time. They found that variants, particularly those within the Omicron lineage, acquired specific mutations in the receptor binding domain. These mutations resulted in shifting patterns of ACE2 usage across different animal species, demonstrating that the relationship between viral evolution and host susceptibility is not static but continuously evolving in response to immune pressure and environmental factors.

To assess the practical implications for human health, the scientists examined blood samples from individuals who had recovered from COVID-19. The antibodies present in these samples were tested against a range of bat coronaviruses to measure their neutralizing capacity. The results showed that these antibodies successfully neutralized a variety of closely related bat coronaviruses. This cross-neutralization indicates that the immune response triggered by SARS-CoV-2 is not strictly specific to that single virus but extends to a broader family of related pathogens, providing a layer of protection against potential new infections.

Professor Katie Doores of King’s College London emphasized that the viruses showing the strongest antigenic similarity to SARS-CoV-2 were the most readily recognized and neutralized by the antibodies generated following infection. In contrast, more distantly related bat coronaviruses tended to be specialists, capable of using ACE2 receptors from only a limited range of hosts. However, the researchers also detected lower levels of neutralization against these more distant viruses, suggesting that there is some degree of broader protection even against pathogens that are not closely related to SARS-CoV-2.

Further experiments conducted at both institutions identified several monoclonal antibodies capable of recognizing a remarkably diverse range of sarbecoviruses. The second companion article in the study detailed where these monoclonal antibodies bind on the viral surface, highlighting conserved regions of the coronavirus spike protein. These conserved regions are less likely to mutate without compromising the virus’s ability to infect cells, making them ideal targets for the development of next-generation vaccines and therapeutics. This approach could lead to the creation of pan-sarbecovirus vaccines that offer protection against multiple strains simultaneously.

Dr. Dalan Bailey, head of the Viral Glycoproteins group at Pirbright, described the evidence of cross-neutralization of even some distantly related bat coronaviruses as an encouraging finding. He suggested that this capability points toward the feasibility of developing broadly protective vaccines or therapeutics that can cover a wide spectrum of sarbecoviruses. By targeting conserved epitopes, such interventions could provide a more durable and comprehensive defense against future zoonotic spillover events, reducing the likelihood of a new pandemic emerging from the bat reservoir.

The work underscores the importance of understanding virus host range, receptor usage, and immune recognition in an integrated manner rather than in isolation. By identifying the specific characteristics that distinguish higher-risk viruses from those less likely to spill over into humans, researchers hope to strengthen global pandemic preparedness efforts. This study provides a scientific basis for monitoring specific bat coronavirus lineages and developing targeted interventions that leverage existing immunity to protect against future viral threats, ultimately contributing to a more resilient global health system.

Subject of Research: Cross-immunity between SARS-CoV-2 and bat sarbecoviruses via ACE2 receptor usage

Article Title: COVID-19 immunity may help protect against other bat coronaviruses

Article References: COVID-19 immunity may help protect against other bat coronaviruses. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2, bat coronaviruses, ACE2 receptor, cross-immunity, spillover risk, Pirbright Institute, King's College London, pandemic preparedness, monoclonal antibodies, zoonotic diseases, COVID-19, immunity