"I don't want to toot our horn, " says Thomas Hughes , head of diabetes and metabolism research at Novartis.

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It is not yet known what long-term impact the move will have on jobs at the company, which was founded in Liverpool in 1912 by Thomas Hughes.

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Others include Gordon Roddick, the widower of Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, from the Roddick Foundation, and Thomas Hughes-Hallett, of the Emily Hughes-Hallet Fund and also chief executive of Marie Curie Cancer Care charity, and Marcelle Speller of Localgiving.com.

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"Not only did we have a legal right to fund the research, we had an obligation, " says Thomas Cech, president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

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