Medical charities and government agencies are to pump £74m into research into new treatments for patients.

The boost for clinical research - science that involves the patient rather than tissue in a laboratory dish - could lead to new approaches to obesity, diabetes, cancer, mental illness, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

The money - from the Wellcome Trust and the Wolfson Foundation, from the Medical Research Council, the Department of Health and the Scottish executive - will go into new labs and centres where university scientists and hospital trusts can work together to translate the latest discoveries in molecular biology into earlier and more accurate diagnoses and more successful treatments.

"If we are going to understand the mechanisms of disease we need to do studies which involve patients. If we are to develop new therapies we need to be able to study those again," said Mark Wal port, director of the Wellcome Trust. "One of the great strengths of the the UK is its strength in biomedical science. Secondly, the National Health Service offers additional important strengths."

A team in Birmingham, for instance, had begun studies of diabetes, obesity and polycystic ovary syndrome: all related conditions and all important causes of disease. An enzyme in liver and fat helped manufacture a steroid hormone called cortisol.

"This then creates a vicious cycle, because that drives the production of more glucose and more fat," Dr Walport said. "The obvious question is what would happen if you inhibit that enzyme? To do that you need to do work in a clinical research facility, working in partnership with the patients."

The NHS offered a huge body of data, clinical experience, case histories and patients anxious to cooperate in scientific research, he said.

But scientists have complained of too few experienced clinicians, too little time and too little money to make the most of such resources.