4 August 2006

Medal of Honour for Dundee scientist

Professor Angus Lamond of the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee has been awarded the prestigious Medal of Honour from the First Medical Faculty of the Charles University Prague, in recognition of his innovative use of proteomics in the study of cell biology.

Professor Lamond is a world authority on the cell nucleus. The nucleus holds the long molecule of DNA called chromosomes which contain the different genes that carry the instructions to allow cells to make proteins and to control their growth and division, and it is within in the nucleus that genes are activated. Each gene is copied every time a cell divides to ensure that both daughter cells receive a copy of every gene.

Many forms of human disease, including viral infections, malignancies and inherited genetic disorders can cause profound changes inside the cell nucleus. Using innovative methods that combine both fluorescence light microscopy and mass spectrometry, Professor Lamond and co-workers have analysed how proteins move and interact within the nuclei of human cells, to understand better the relationship between these specific changes and the mechanism of disease.

Professor Lamond previously headed a research group in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg and came to Dundee in 1995 when he was appointed to a Professorship in Biochemistry. He is the Head of the Division of Gene Regulation and Expression at the University of Dundee and is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

On hearing of his award Professor Lamond said, "I am delighted to receive this award, which was made possible thanks to the excellent facilities and the outstanding environment for conducting biomedical research that has been established here in Dundee."

Notes to Editor:

The First Faculty of Medicine has been a part of Charles University in Prague since its foundation, in 1348, by the Bohemian King and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire Charles IV. From 1953 to 1990 it was called The Faculty of General Medicine, and its present name, which is derived from the Faculty's ancient tradition, has been in use since 1990. It is the oldest medical faculty in Central Europe, and the largest medical faculty in the Czech Republic. Prague, the city where the Faculty is located, was the capital of the former Czechoslovak Republic, founded in 1918 as one of the democratic states in Central Europe. Prague has also become the capital of the Czech Republic, established as an independent democratic state in 1993.

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