4 December 2006

Francis Crick Lecture 2006

Professor Dario Alessi, of the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee, has been chosen to deliver the prestigious 2006 Francis Crick Prize Lecture at the Royal Society.

He will deliver his lecture, titled "Deciphering disease: disruption on the molecular highways of cell communication", at the Royal Society in London on Tuesday December 6th.

The human body may seem to be no more than a bundle of tissues and organs, yet the cells these are made from are capable of interacting, communicating and performing complex tasks. Our cells' capacity to interact in this way enables humans to adapt to their environment and is the key to our survival.

Biologists have long sought to comprehend how cells accomplish this high level of communication, and in recent years research has taken on an added urgency, as it has become clear that defects in cell signalling networks are a principal cause of major diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

This lecture will shed light on the area of cell signalling and unravel the molecular processes by which these pathways operate. The aim of this research is to develop drugs that repair these vital channels of communication when things go wrong. This could result in the development of better treatments or even cures for diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

Professor Alessi is based in the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the College of Life Sciences and is also Director of the Dundee Diabetes Research Centre.

The Francis Crick Lecture was established in 2003 following an endowment by Dr Sydney Brenner CH FRS, joint winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The Francis Crick Lecture is given annually in any field of biological science and is held in honour of the scientist who with James Watson solved the structure of DNA in 1953.

For media enquiries contact:

Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk