New life sciences institute for Dundee

A new £10 million life sciences institute, led by Professor Sir Philip Cohen, is to be based in Dundee.

The creation of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling was officially announced by the Scottish Government in May during a visit to the University by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning.

The planned Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling will link the University's existing College of Life Sciences to create the strongest research complex of its kind in Europe. It will create 40 jobs initially, become a new engine for the city's economy and help drive forward Scotland's £1 billion life sciences sector.

The Institute will concentrate on an emerging area of 'cell signalling', which has great potential for the development of drugs to treat cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

Welcoming the announcement Sir Philip Cohen, Director of the new Institute, stressed the importance of research into this area.

"Cell Signalling is one of the largest branches of the life sciences and an area of great importance to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries," he said.

"Dundee is recognised as a world leader in this field. The initial aim of the Institute is to build up new strengths in an emerging area of cell signalling, called `protein ubiquitination' which we believe will become the next major area of drug discovery.

"By concentrating on this now, we will be in a strong position to exploit the future promise of this area.

"The College of Life Sciences at Dundee has already played a key role in developing other areas of cell signalling such as protein phosphorylation, which has led to major spin-offs through the critical mass of leading researchers and technology that we have gathered here.

"Our pre-eminence in this field was instrumental in the creation of the biotechnology company Upstate Inc. in 1999, which now employs around 100 people in Dundee, and also enabled us to establish the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy, a collaboration with six of the world's major pharmaceutical companies which has attracted £40 million in funding, secured another 50 jobs and become a model for how collaborations between Academia and Industry should work.

"We have an outstanding track record here in Dundee in carrying out ground-breaking research on cell signalling and we expect that SCILLS will build on that."

Funding for the new Institute will be provided by the Scottish Funding Council through the University.

Making the announcement in Dundee, Ms Hyslop described the city as a "centre for excellence" in life sciences.

"Driving forward Scotland's economic growth is at the heart of everything that we do.

"We already have an excellent reputation internationally for our research, and especially for our performance in the field of life sciences.

"Dundee in particular is an international centre of excellence for this kind of work, with 16 per cent of its workers involved in or supporting the sector.

"To take this on to a new level, we need a new centre, equipped and managed to the highest standards, to attract outstanding international scientists and most promising young researchers to Scotland. This national Institute will deliver that."

"At the same time, Scottish Enterprise will work with the Institute to ensure that we maximise the commercial outputs from research carried out at the Institute, so that all of Scotland can share in its success."

Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland, Professor Anne Glover added: "The announcement of this new Institute for Cell Signalling is very good news for Scotland. The Institute will build on a significant research strength and will further complement the very strong life science research base that we have here.

"Under the leadership of Professor Sir Philip Cohen, the Institute is in an excellent position to attract more world-class scientists to Scotland and to ensure that the research output contributes to our quality of life and economy."