History

The charity was founded in 1952 by Duncan Guthrie in his quest to find a cure for polio, a condition that blighted the lives of many thousands of children including his own daughter, Janet. Early research funded by the charity contributed to the development and rapid adoption of the first oral polio vaccine which eradicated new cases of the disease in the UK.

Since then the charity has developed an extraordinary track record in supporting some of the most significant medical breakthroughs in recent history – breakthroughs that have helped save thousands of children’s lives and changed many more.

Children have always been at the heart of what we do. Here are just some of our key successes in child health.

Helping more babies be born healthy by:

• helping introduce ultrasound scanning in pregnancy
• discovering the importance of taking folic acid before and during pregnancy to prevent spina bifida
• developing an infrared scanner to help minimise the risk of brain damage in babies
• developing a state-of-the-art fetal heart rate monitor to make pregnancy safer for babies at risk
• showing that a special cap that cools the brain can minimise brain damage in some newborn babies deprived of oxygen at birth, reducing the risk of death and severe disability.

Supporting children with disabilities by:

• developing a revolutionary growing prosthesis (artificial limb bone) for children whose bones have been destroyed by tumours
• creating the award-winning, adjustable Matrix seating system to help support physically disabled children as they grow
• devising the Paediatric Pain Profile to help parents and health professionals to assess and relieve pain in severely disabled children.

Protecting children from infections by:

• supporting the lead researcher whose team helped establish a vaccine for meningitis
• testing the early rubella vaccine – now part of the MMR vaccine.

Finding the causes of rare diseases by:

• identifying the genes responsible for rare and devastating conditions, such as Von Hippel-Lindau disease, which causes tumours to grow on many parts of the body; Van der Woude syndrome, a form of cleft lip and palate; and for the hereditary skin condition incontinentia pigment, which causes severe blistering of the skin.

Although the research we have funded has helped save and change so many children’s lives, there is still so much more to learn about what triggers diseases, how to prevent them and how to develop effective new treatments and find the best ways to treat sick babies and children.

Professorial chairs and units funded by Action Medical Research

Earlier in our history, the charity endowed professorial departments or chairs to encourage research in various branches of medicine. Since 1963, the charity committed nearly £2 million towards 13 research chairs. The majority of these were envisaged as being in perpetuity, with the money invested by the university to maintain in whole or part, the original purpose of the endowment. Nine of these professorial departments or chairs still exist.

Name changes

During the lifetime of the charity we have had a number of name changes leading to Action Medical Research.

The charity was originally located in Vincent House, Vincent Square, London SW1 before moving to Horsham in 1971.