The Instituto de Medicina Molecular (Institute of Molecular Medicine), or IMM for short, is an associated research

Research

Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...

 institution of the University of Lisbon, in Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

, Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

.

IMM is devoted to human genome

Human genome

The human genome is the genome of Homo sapiens, which is stored on 23 chromosome pairs plus the small mitochondrial DNA. 22 of the 23 chromosomes are autosomal chromosome pairs, while the remaining pair is sex-determining...

 research with the aim of contributing to a better understanding of disease mechanisms, developing novel predictive tests, improving diagnostics tools, and developing new therapeutic approaches.

History

IMM was created in November 2001, as a result from the association of 5 research centres from the University of Lisbon Medical School: the Biology and Molecular Pathology Centre (CEBIP), the Lisbon Neurosciences Centre (CNL), the Microcirculation and Vascular Pathobiology Centre (CMBV), the Gastroenterology Centre (CG), and the Nutrition and Metabolism Centre (CNB). In 2003, the Molecular Pathobiology Research Centre (CIPM) of the Portuguese Institute of Oncology Francisco Gentil (IPOFG) became an associate member of IMM.

Historically, IMM benefited from the full integration of academic researchers into the Lisbon Medical School who initiated their academic training and scientific careers at Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência

Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência

The is an international centre for biomedical research and graduate education, located in in Oeiras, Portugal. It was founded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1961. António Coutinho has been the Institute's Director since 1998....

 (IGC), in Oeiras, one of the first national institutions to introduce and make use of state-of-the-art cell and molecular biology techniques.