Dinner honours 30 years of Sir Philip

Professor Sir Philip Cohen was honoured last night with a dinner to mark his 30th year at the University last month.

Over 70 friends of the University, the City and the Ninewells cancer campaign gathered to pay tribute to the man whose vision and energy brought the £14 million Wellcome Trust Biocentre to Dundee and helped transform a modest biochemistry department into an internationally rated five star research facility investigating the fundamentals of diseases including cancer.

Born just north of London in 1945, Philip completed his first two degrees at University College London where he met his wife, Tricia. The two then spent two years carrying out postdoctoral research at the University of Washington, Seattle, nicely positioned in the Pacific northwest between ocean and mountain. It was a location that suited them so well that on their return to the UK in 1971 they sought to echo that rare blend of excellent research facility and easy access to a superb landscape. Turning down a host of alternatives including Oxford and Cambridge, they settled in Dundee which had just opened a new medical sciences building and appointed Peter Garland as its first professor of biochemistry.

Over the following years, funded by the Medical Research Council, Philip established his reputation as a brilliant scientist with over 400 papers published, gradually unravelling the secrets of one of the most fundamental processes in the body - protein phosphorylation. Abnormalities in this process are associated with many diseases including diabetes and cancer and it is the cure of diabetes that Sir Philip has long had within his ultimate sights. Over more than 20 years, inspiration coupled with the sheer dogged determination for which he is well known, has at last led to the mapping of the complex signalling pathway triggered by insulin. The hope is that within the next few years a drug can be developed for diabetes sufferers that exploits the knowledge that has been gained.

In tandem with Sir Philip's pursuit of the science however was the establishment of The Wellcome Trust Biocentre - a massive endeavour which ultimately attracted what is believed to be the biggest single charitable donation in Scotland - £10 million from the medical research charity the Wellcome Trust. Tagged "Dundee's citadel of science", the WTB currently houses 38 independent research groups led by international award winners many of whom have been lured to the shores of the Tay by exactly those qualities which Sir Philip found irresistible so many years ago - research excellence and quality of life.

Over those years Sir Philip has collected a sheaf of honours and awards, from the Colworth Medal in 1977 as the most promising young British biochemist through Fellowships of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Society of London, to the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 1997 - an honour widely regarded as "just one down from a Nobel Prize". Sir Philip was knighted in 1998 and went on to receive the Pfizer Award for Innovative Science the following year. In addition to holding the post of director of the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit and director of the Wellcome Trust Biocentre, he is one of the 17 Royal Society Research Professors in the UK, a position that he has held since 1984.

The dinner was addressed by Dr Adam Neville who was Principal of the University in Sir Philip's early years, Dr Tim Hunt Nobel Prize winner who is to receive an honorary degree from the University in July, and Principal and Vice Chancellor Sir Alan Langlands.

It was hosted by the chairman and vice chairman of the Ninewells Cancer Campaign Dr Jacqui Wood and Dr Pat McPherson.

Caption l to r Professor Philip Cohen, Dr Jacqui Wood and former principal Dr Adam Neville. Back - Sir James Black,. Dr Tim Hunt, Dr Pat McPherson and Sir Alan Langlands. Photo courtesy of DC Thomson.

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