Annual Report 1998/1999

Working with Industry

Commercialisation of research is central to many University's role in helping to create the 'Knowledge Economy', to use the current catchphrase. The University has been actively involved for many years in successfully exploiting its 'intellectual property' via licensing arrangements, spin-out companies, start-up companies, joint ventures and research agreements. The University was the prime mover and is the largest shareholder in the Dundee Incubator Company which provides a supportive environment for fledgling companies.

Currently the University has at least a dozen new ventures at various stages on the road to becoming spin-out or start-up companies. Our commitment and achievements in turning research into beneficial end-products can be illustrated by the following examples.

photo of Dr Mike Pritchard and Dr Michael Voice

Scottish Science Enterprise Centre

The University will be a key player in a successful consortium bid by five leading Scottish Universities for £4 million funding awarded under the £25 million Science Enterprise Challenge Programme to establish eight centres of enterprise in UK Universities. The Enterprise Institute for Scotland aims to be a world-class centre for the transfer and exploitation of knowledge and will equip scientists and engineers with entrepreneurial and business skills.

In Vitro Testing of Drug Metabolism

Professor Roland Wolf together with Dr Thomas Friedberg and Dr Clifford Elcombe of the Biomedical Research Centre and colleagues at the University of Leicester have joined a consortium with eleven international pharmaceutical companies in a five year £2.7 million research programme designed to speed up the process of bringing safe new drugs on to the market. The team of ten scientists will make use of major advances in molecular and structural biology to improve in vitro methods of studying drug metabolism. A major aim of the study is to develop in vitro cultures in which human liver cells maintain their function, previously a stumbling block, allowing the metabolism of new drugs to be tested rigorously.

Drugs for Immune Disorders

The collaboration between Professor Colin Watts and the pharmaceutical company, Peptide Therapeutics Ltd, offers hope to the growing number of people suffering from major immune system disorders including allergies such as asthma and autoimmune disorders. The collaboration centres on an enzyme (AEP) identified by Professor Watts and his colleagues which is believed to play a crucial role in triggering an immune response. The aim is to develop drugs which can be taken orally to switch off the AEP enzyme and to block the adverse reactions that occur in immune function disorders.

Concrete Technology

The Concrete Technology Unit won a major award for its work in partnership with industry for the second successive year. The cash prize, awarded by the Department of Trade and Industry, recognised the Unit’s innovative partnerships with industry covering environmental sustainability, quality of life, technology transfer, training and consultancy services. Concrete is the most important building material and the Unit aims to challenge the perception of it as the ‘ugly face of construction’ by using research funding of £1.5 million (thought to be the largest single investment in this field at a UK University) to conduct a series of projects bringing together industry and academic research from inception through to final technology transfer. Forthcoming projects will study how domestic construction and industrial wastes can be recycled into valuable concrete products, and use new tools to solve the age-old problem of achieving the most efficient combination of constituents for concrete.

BioDundee

The BioDundee campaign was launched a year ago by funding agencies in the city to promote Dundee internationally as a centre of excellence in biotechnology and life sciences. Essentially it is building on the pioneering research and development work undertaken at the University. An American-based biotechnology company which has had a successful working relationship with Professor Sir Philip Cohen is planning a £4.5 million investment in the city. The company has been marketing enzymes produced by Professor Cohen’s Unit and used in the search for cures for various types of disease and will now build on this relationship to make use of the technology developed for producing some of these materials in very large quantities for use by pharmaceutical companies. To do this both partners need to be in the same location.

Cyclacel, the spin-out company developing cancer treatments from the research of Professor Sir David Lane, discoverer of the p53 gene, is about to begin clinical trials of a drug which mimics the effect of cancer suppressing proteins naturally occurring in the body and of another which will direct existing anti-cancer drugs into the cell nucleus.

Cypex is the spin-out company from a five-year research project in the Biomedical Research Centre in which scientists successfully developed and patented genetically-engineered products designed to investigate how well the human body breaks down drugs. Co-directors, Drs Mike Pritchard and Michael Voice, will take the results of this drug screening research into the commercial world and are confident of a world-wide demand from pharmaceutical companies for their unique products which speed up screening and lead to safer drugs reaching patients more quickly.

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