Queen's Anniversary Prize Awarded for pioneering research

The Principal Sir Alan Langlands and Director of Research for the School of Life Sciences Professor Sir Philip Cohen have attended a ceremony at Buckingham Palace where they were awarded the prestigious Queen's Anniversary Prize for Higher Education by Her Majesty The Queen.

The award was made to the University for the work of the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT), a collaborative project which has united normally fiercely competitive rivals from the pharmaceutical industry in the quest to develop new drugs targeted at major diseases including cancer and diabetes.

Sir Philip and Sir Alan were joined by outgoing University Chancellor Sir James Black and Dean of the School of Life Sciences and co-director of the DSTT, Professor Pete Downes.

Sir Philip Cohen said, "It took two years hard work from 1996-1998 to persuade five companies to join in this venture and to get the lawyers from each company to sign a single agreement, which was finally achieved at a meeting behind locked doors at Heathrow Airport! It is therefore very rewarding that it has turned out to be so successful."

"At scientific conferences GlaxoSmithKline have described it as the best run of the 1000-plus academic collaborations in which they participate worldwide and the DSTT has helped to initiate a huge number of new drug discovery programmes. Pfizer have described it as their most important academic collaboration worldwide."

The consortium was recognised by the Department of Trade and Industry last year as a model of best practice in technology transfer and has directly injected well over £23 million directly into the local economy.