The Christie NHS Foundation Trust

The Christie Hospital had its beginnings in the largesse of Sir Joseph Whitworth, a wealthy Mancunian inventor who left money in his will in 1887. He wanted this to be spent on good causes in Manchester and entrusted his bequest to three legatees, one of whom was Richard Copley Christie.[3] Consequently, some of that money was used to buy land off Oxford Road, adjacent to Owens College and intended to allow the movement of the central Manchester hospitals out of the crowded city centre.[4] A committee chaired by Christie was established in 1890 and, partly funded by a legacy of £10,000 from Daniel Proctor, a Cancer Pavilion and Home for Incurables was founded on the site in 1892 some distance south-east of the eye hospital.[5] In 1901 it was renamed the Christie Hospital in honour of Richard Christie and his wife Mary.[6] It was the only hospital outside London for the treatment of cancer alone and active in pathological research.[7]

In 1901, the Christie Management Committee agreed to the request of Dr Robert Biggs Wild to spend £50 on the equipment necessary to test the efficacy of X-ray treatment, after promising results reported from London and from three patients treated in the Physics Laboratory of Professor Schuster locally in Owens College. The Roentgen apparatus was purchased, but no records survive of treatment, and by 1907 the equipment was no longer being used (it was given to the Skin Hospital in 1910).[8] By 1905, Dr Wild had become interested in the therapeutic use of the newly discovered radium and experimented, once more with aid from Professor Schuster, on three patients. Radium was expensive, however, and the management refused to purchase any more until the results of tests from London hospitals were available. By 1914, a leading local doctor, Sir William Milligan, had begun a campaign in the 'Manchester Guardian' to raise funds for radium treatment. Appealing to a mixture of local pride and the contemporary enthusiasm for the curative powers of radium, an appeal was launched, on the advice of Ernest Rutherford, for £25,000. An initial contribution of £2000 from local brewer Edward Holt was not initially much emulated, but following the intervention of the Mayor, a series of 'Radium days' were organized which eventually raised enough money to start a small Radium Institute, initially housed in the Manchester Royal Infirmary. In 1921 it moved to new premises in Nelson Street donated by Sir Edward and Lady Holt, and became the Manchester and District Radium Institute.[8] By contrast with the dispersed and competitive provision of London radiotherapy, Manchester became the first provider of a centralised radiotherapy service, which would have long-lasting effects on the patterns of British cancer care.[9][10]

In 1932 the institute, renamed as the Holt Radium Institute, and the Christie Hospital moved to a new joint site on Wilmslow Road, Withington and began to be jointly managed although a formal merger did not occur until 1946.[8]

Ralston Paterson was appointed as Director of the Radium Institute in 1931, and went on, with a small hand picked team, to build a world recognised centre for the treatment of cancer by radiation.[10] Among the team was his wife Edith Paterson, who started research work at the Christie in 1938, initially unpaid, and who became an expert in radiation biology.[11] The first betatron machine was purchased from Paris and installed in the building, run by Marjorie Pearce.

The department, was the subject of a live BBC TV programme, "Your Life In Their Hands" in the late 1950s. A telerecording of this programme exists online.

After Ralston Paterson's retirement in 1963, Professor Eric Craig Easson, CBE, was appointed Director of the Christie Hospital. He became world famous for his contribution to the curability of Hodgkin's disease and to cancer education. He was awarded a personal Professorial Chair at the University of Manchester, and was President of the Royal College of Radiologists (1975–1977). He was the government adviser on cancer for many years, and was a prime mover in the Union Internationale Contre Cancer in Geneva, as well as the WHO cancer group. During Professor Easson's tenure as Director, many doctors from throughout the world visited the Christie Hospital to absorb its ethos and to learn its techniques.[12]

Early impetuses to research came from new local diseases of industrialisation such as mule spinners' cancer and chimney sweep's cancer, and the search for links to machine oils and airborne soot. Subsequent therapeutic milestones have included:[6]

• 1932 - development of the Manchester Method, the first international standard for radium treatment
• 1944 - world's first clinical trial of diethylstilbestrol (Stilboestrol) for breast cancer
• 1970 - world's first clinical use of tamoxifen (Nolvadex) for breast cancer
• 1986 - world's first use of cultured bone marrow for leukaemia treatment
• 1991 - world's first single harvest blood stem-cell transplant

Professor Laszlo Lajtha was appointed director of research in 1962. New research laboratories, provided by the Women's Trust Fund and named after the Patersons, were opened in 1966. The Women's Trust Fund was a local charity, chaired by Lady Margaret Holt, daughter-in-law of Sir Edward Holt, who left her entire estate of over £8 million to the Christie when she died in 1997.[5] Core funding for the laboratories was secured from the Medical Research Council and the Cancer Research Campaign (CRC). The CRC also located the CRC Department of Medical Oncology, led by Professor Derek Crowther, at the Paterson.[13]

Lajtha was succeeded as Director in 1983 by Professor David Harnden. Professor T. Michael Dexter served in the post for a short time before the appointment of Professor Nic Jones as Director in March 1999.[13] Professor Jones stepped down in 2011 and Professor Richard Marais was appointed as the new Director in 2012.[14]

The Paterson Institute for Cancer Research changed its name to the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (CRUK MI) on 1 October 2013.[15]

Mid-morning on 26 April 2017, emergency services were called to the CRUK MI building to tackle a large fire which broke out on the institute's roof.[16] The blaze rapidly spread throughout the building, destroying cancer research facilities and leading to the displacement of over 300 scientists and support staff. A forensic investigation conducted by the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service determined that the most probable cause of the fire was from hot debris from welding work being carried out on the institute roof which landed on cardboard, carpet and other flammable substances.[17]

In April 2018, plans were revealed to build a new state-of-the-art cancer research centre on the site of the former Paterson building, due to open in early 2021.[18]