The evolution of Life Sciences at Dundee

This year his work has been recognised with the award of a Royal Medal from the Royal Society and election to the National Academy of Sciences in the USA, two of the highest honours a scientist can achieve.

Here, Sir Philip charts the development of life sciences in Dundee, from humble beginnings to a cornerstone of the local economy with an influence extending around the globe.

It has been called Dundee's 'citadel of science'. Sitting at the north edge of the University campus and commanding stunning views across the Tay estuary, the Life Sciences research complex is a collection of state-of-the-art laboratories housing hundreds of staff. Ten years ago saw the moment when life sciences went from being a strong part of the University to a visibly key presence in the local economy for Dundee and the surrounding area, when the £15million Wellcome Trust Biocentre opened its doors.

That has since been followed by the £21million Sir James Black Centre, a hothouse of interdisciplinary research which is making important contributions to the battles against cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and tropical diseases.

The fact that the College of Life Sciences at Dundee has become a world centre of excellence is reflected in the remarkable statistic that of the almost 800 scientists and support staff, almost half are from overseas, with 55 different nationalities represented.

This is all a far cry from the scene which greeted Professor Sir Philip Cohen when he first arrived in Dundee in 1971, a visit that started with him being shown the now fabled converted stable block which at the time had been home to what was a small biochemistry department.

'I got here and one of the first things I saw was this converted stable block, which was not at all impressive,' Philip recalled. 'Looking back I'm actually amazed I came having seen that.

'But Peter Garland had not long started here as their first Professor of Biochemistry, and he was able to convince me that good things were going to be happening here. That was quite a brave thing to say in itself. There were a lot of people who thought Peter had made a mistake coming here - after all, Dundee had literally no profile at all when it came to biosciences.

'I came because I had a lot of respect for Peter and thought he might just be right. The other attraction was that the new Medical Sciences Institute building had just been completed. The great thing about the MSI was that it was a huge building and it was practically empty, so I knew I could get a lot of space.'

Thus the seeds were sown for what would grow to become a major scientific centre. But there were to be significant growing pains along the way.

'I was just a young researcher when I came here, just 26 years yearsold,' said Philip. 'What I didn't know was that the University didn't have any money!

'It was a real, real struggle to keep things going for most of the 1970s. We were lucky in one way in that the finance department didn't have a clue what we were doing! We did run up a fairly sizeable deficit and things were shaky at times, but Peter Garland said that if we stopped doing experiments because there wasn't any money then we'd be finished. So we scrabbled and scraped to find funding - he would give me money from his budget so I could get things finished.' This rather hand-to-mouth existence reached a low point for Philip in 1975, when the financial reality of the situation looked utterly bleak. It was at this time that the first contacts were made in what would turn out to be an extremely positive relationship, as Philip explained.

'By the summer of 1975 we thought the lab may have to close because we were just so short of funds. It was then I heard of the Wellcome Trust, who it was clear would give £1000 of a grant if you applied and had a good project - this was long before the days when you routinely applied for grants and a time when the Trust was not the same size of organisation it is now.

'They gave me £1000 and that kept us going through that summer. It really was a very close thing, but that kept our head above water just long enough for things to start taking a more positive turn.

'It wasn't too long after that when Adam Neville came to be Principal of the University and decided to bail us out and put increased resources into life sciences at Dundee. That has since proved, I would say, to be a very good decision.'

From here on life was about to get considerably better, but it was an improvement grounded in the hard lessons which had been learnt.

'Things were so tough in the 1970s that we really learned to stand on our own two feet and became quite good at getting money from any place we could find it,' said Philip. 'People then just didn't think about writing for research grants, whereas that was what we had to do just to survive. Those times of adversity proved very valuable for us in the long run.'

As the 1980s dawned, things were starting to seriously pick up. The reputation built on the science carried out by Peter Garland, Philip Cohen and others was starting to make people notice Dundee. Recruitment was picking up and would soon start to gather serious momentum as more and more rising stars of the science world began to be lured to the city.

It was the effort put into identifying potential new staff which Philip believes has been key in building life sciences at Dundee. Everything from three-day interviews and intense scientific debate to revelations of the best spots locally for picking wild mushrooms and timely deliveries of vintage champagne has played a role in bringing people to Dundee.

'Recruitment is everything,' says Philip now. 'Getting the right people has always been absolutely key and we have always operated a very intense recruitment procedure and put a lot of effort into it. We always appointed people who we thought we would enjoy working with, and vice versa, people who are open to interacting with our people right across the College.

'I think we have been very good at that and one of the great things about being here is seeing people develop. We have seen a good number of people progress here from being junior researchers to full Professor level, and to see them grow like that is a real joy.

'We have been lucky to get some very good people, and in some cases get them quite early on. People like Mike Ferguson, Pete Downes, Roland Wolf, David Lane - these people have been the bedrock of what we have been able to achieve in Dundee. The facilities have become good and we have done a lot of very good things, but at the heart of it all are the people working here.'

Not least Philip himself. He has undoubtedly been a key factor in Dundee's development as a force in life sciences - as a scientist, as director of facilities such as the Medical Research Council's Protein Phosphorylation Unit and the Division for Signal Transduction Therapy, and as fundraiser and recruiter.

His dogged determination and self-belief, both in himself and the strengths of those around him, has been key in attracting some of the biggest projects to come to Dundee, such as the Wellcome Trust Biocentre.

Philip's own view is that the complementary talents of he and Peter Garland blended perfectly in helping build things up at Dundee.

'Peter Garland was extremely good at starting things,' he said. 'My strong point lies in picking things up which have already been started and keeping at them like a terrier.

'People have asked if we were pursuing the big picture all that time and did I have it all mapped out? I didn't have a clue about a big picture! We were always just trying to make things work and make them work well.

'People thought that Peter Garland had written off the rest of his career in coming here. It wasn't so much that Dundee wasn't well known for life sciences, it just wasn't known at all. We were never thinking in terms of this becoming one of the top two or three places in Europe for life sciences, and to be honest if that had been suggested at any time in the mid-1970s, then we would have laughed.'

The reality is that Dundee has gone from being almost literally unheard of in the realm of biosciences to a significant name on the world stage. The University now ranks consistently highly in international indicators of research impact and quality while also receiving top marks in an influential poll of the best places to work for a scientist.

The transformation has been remarkable. But the hard work is not finished. As the biosciences industry continues to grow, so does the competition to recruit the best people and to attract funding. The University and the city will do well to maintain its position in the face of competition everywhere from within Scotland to the farthest reaches of the globe.

'I think we are coming to a challenging time for life sciences in Dundee, but one that we are well equipped to face,' said Philip.

'The strong are getting stronger and, overall, the playing field is becoming a harder, more challenging environment to succeed in. In this light some of the things we have managed to achieve in Dundee may be viewed as us having got away with murder, but those days are coming to an end.

'The reason I say 'challenging' is that other places are coming to realise, after all these years, why we have been so successful in Dundee and they are trying to copy us.

'The competition has risen a notch - you see some of the places in England becoming stronger, partly due to being able to flex a bit more financial muscle due to income from tuition fees.

'There are also some big traditional names, such as Oxford, who previously weren't offering any competition in this field, but are now getting into it.

'But we are good at what we do and we can keep doing that. We are still growing, which is remarkable in itself. When we moved into the Medical Sciences Institute in 1971 I can remember saying 'They've built this place a hundred times too big, we'll never fill it!' Since then we've had to keep building. And we can keep growing too.'

That growth can be seen already - in the spring of 2008 Philip was named as Director of the Scottish Institute of Cell Signalling, a venture launched with a £10million grant from the Scottish Government which will be based in Dundee.

Life Sciences at the University of Dundee

Dundee ranked 3rd in the top 10 UK universities and research institutes by 'impact of research' as measured by the Thomson Scientific Index in 2007.

Thomson's ratings placed Dundee 2nd in Europe for research in Biology and Biochemistry 1996-2006 and 4th in Europe for Molecular Biology and Genetics.

The total value of research grants awarded to the College of Life Sciences, August 2006 to July 2007, was £48.7million, a £20 million increase on the previous year.

Sir Philip is Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit, based within the College of Life Sciences, which comprises eight Programme Leaders and over 120 scientific and support staff.

With his colleague Professor Peter Downes, Sir Philip set up the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy at Dundee in 1998, a collaboration with six of the world's major pharmaceutical companies. This collaboration, worth £20million over the period 2003-2008, is thought be the UK's largest collaboration between Academia and Industry and is being renewed for a further four years until 2012. It has become a model for how such collaborations should work, and received a Queen's Anniversary Award for Higher Education in 2006.