A groundbreaking research centre is to be funded with £10m (€12.8m; $15.7m) over five years and will be based at the current antidoping facilities for the London Olympic Games.

The new Medical Research Council Phenome Centre at the current Olympics antidoping laboratory in Harlow, Essex, will help researchers to explore disease characteristics so as to develop new drugs and treatments. Researchers at the centre will investigate the phenome patterns of patients and volunteers by analysing samples, usually blood or urine, very rapidly and on an unprecedented scale.

The intention is that this will help them to discover new biomarkers to explain why one person or …