22 June 2006

Official opening of the Sir James Black Centre

**Embargoed until 12.30pm on Thursday June 22nd 2006**

The University of Dundee’s £20 million Sir James Black Centre will be officially opened today (Thursday June 22nd) by Professor Sydney Brenner, a Nobel Laureate and one of the world’s legendary figures in the field of genetics.

The centre (formerly known as the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research) is a state-of-the-art research facility which is home to 250 scientists and staff conducting research into diabetes, cancer and tropical diseases in the School of Life Sciences. It adjoins the Wellcome Trust Biocentre and provides a ‘citadel of science’ which is now a central feature of the city skyline.

Professor Brenner, who is to receive an honorary doctorate from the University on June 23rd, was the 2002 winner of the Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine along with another University honorary graduate, Sir John Sulston and Dr Robert Horvitz.

"We are delighted to be able to name this building after our former Chancellor and Nobel Prize winner Sir James Black OM FRS FRSE and we are honoured to have Nobel Prize winner Professor Sydney Brenner join us for the opening," said Sir Alan Langlands, Principal of the University.

"Both men are icons of British science whose contributions have furthered our understanding of physiology and medicine and whose work has fundamentally changed millions of lives."

"Sydney Brenner’s presence at the formal opening of this building, dedicated to tackling major diseases, is the highest compliment to Dundee and underlines the calibre of the research being conducted here under the leadership of Professor Sir Philip Cohen and Professors Pete Downes, Mike Ferguson and Alan Fairlamb."

"I spoke at length about this with James Black at the weekend - he could not be more delighted and looks forward to visiting Dundee in the autumn to discuss progress with the scientists in the new building."

The Sir James Black Centre was funded by commercial income generated by the School of Life Sciences, University investment funding and a fundraising campaign led by the Dundee-born actor Brian Cox, a Type 2 diabetes sufferer, and two of Dundee’s most prominent scientists - Professor Sir Philip Cohen, the second most cited biologist in the world and Professor Michael Ferguson, an internationally recognised authority in parasitology.

Staff began moving into the building last August and the recruitment of researchers to work in it has proceeded at a remarkable rate so that 200 of the 300 scientists are already in place.

The addition of the Sir James Black Centre to existing facilities means that Dundee has a larger medical research complex than the National Institute for Medical Research in London.

Sir Philip Cohen said "The Sir James Black Centre will take life sciences research at Dundee to a new level and allow us to develop new areas of research that complement those that already exist. We are extremely grateful to all the organisations and philanthropists whose donations made this project possible."

The development of the life sciences base, led by the University, has provided new economic impetus and a sense of pride to a post-industrial city. More than 14% of the local economy is now generated from life sciences activities, so that the University’s commitment to expanding the research base in Life Sciences has had a massive economic and social impact in Dundee and Tayside.

The completion of the Sir James Black Centre further consolidates the University’s reputation as the best institution for a scientist to work in Europe (The Scientist Magazine, 2004 & 2005).

NOTES TO EDITORS

Professor Sydney Brenner, the South African scientist, is one of the pioneers of genetic engineering and like Francis Crick and James Watson, an icon of science. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2002 in physiology or medicine along with another University honorary graduate, Sir John Sulston for his work on a specific model organism, the tiny worm C. elegans.

Professor Brenner discovered messenger RNA (the link between the DNA of our genes and the proteins they code for) in 1960. For these discoveries in 1971, Brenner received the Lasker Award, sometimes referred to as "America's Nobel" in Basic Medical Research.

Professor Brenner was born in Germiston, near Johannesburg, and studied at the University of the Witwatersrand and in the UK at Oxford. From 1957 he researched in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the Medical Research Council, Cambridge, and in 1980 was appointed its director. Professor Brenner is also interested in tumour biology through the application of modern molecular biology techniques.

The Sir James Black Centre
Formerly called the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, the new building has been renamed in honour of Sir James who recently stepped down after 11 years as the Chancellor of the University of Dundee. Sir James started his research career in Dundee as an Assistant Lecturer in the Department of Physiology in 1946 and later went on to develop two of the worlds best selling medicines, namely Beta Blockers for heart disease and Tagamet for ulcers. These pioneering contributions to rational drug design led him to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology in 1988.

The Sir James Black Centre will house 300 scientists and support staff when it is fully occupied, researching tropical diseases, diabetes and cancer.

Tropical Diseases and Translational Research: Dundee boasts one of the leading research groups in Europe studying African sleeping sickness, Chagas’ disease, Leishmaniasis and malaria.

Tropical diseases, caused by insect-transmitted protozoan parasites, affect hundreds of millions of people worldwide each year, primarily in the poorest developing nations.

In many cases there are no vaccines available and current drugs to treat these diseases, developed over 40 years ago, are very toxic and not always effective. Because the people of these countries are too poor to buy medicines the pharmaceutical industry is not interested in developing drug treatments and these are considered ‘neglected diseases’.

The Sir James Black Centre houses the Drug Discovery Unit, which hosts world-class facilities in medicinal and synthetic organic chemistry, computational chemistry and compound screening laboratories, aimed at developing new, safer and more effective drugs therapies for the treatment of global parasitic diseases. These Translational Research facilities have already attracted a further £9.5 million in research funding from The Wellcome Trust and other organizations. The centre also houses a Scottish Facility for Compound Screening and Library Synthesis, a joint venture with the Universities of Glasgow and St Andrews.

These new facilities will also serve some of the needs of the diabetes and cancer research activities.

Diabetes: A group of 70 scientists are researching the causes of diabetes with the aim of identifying protein targets for therapeutic intervention, and it is intended to recruit research teams with expertise in the genetics of diabetes.

Diabetes is the epidemic of the developed world, affecting over 15,000 people in Tayside, nearly 2 million in the UK and 200 million worldwide. As well as being the leading cause of blindness in the developed world, diabetics also have an increased risk of kidney damage, heart disease, stroke and impotence. Diabetes also reduces life expectancy by at least 10 years. With the incidence of diabetes expected to double to 7% of the UK population by 2020, improved drugs are urgently needed to prevent and/or treat diabetes. Currently, 10% of the NHS budget is spent treating the complications arising from diabetes.

Cancer: Based on the success of the Division of Gene Regulation and Expression, lead by Professor Angus Lamond in the Wellcome Trust Biocentre, the University has expanded cancer research in the Sir James Black Centre by making key academic appointments. Indeed, five key Team Leaders have already been recruited to this programme bringing back to Scotland young British and European scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Massacheusetts Institute of Technology in Boston and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. Thus, the James Black Centre is helping to reverse the brain drain. The establishment of Translational Research capabilities (see above) will also be very important for the development of anti-cancer drugs that target proteins identified in one or more of the 20+ research teams at Dundee who are funded by Cancer Research UK.

How the Centre has been Funded
Substantial funding for the £23 million building came partly from Scottish Research Infrastructure Fund (SRIF) awards and donations from medical charities, philanthropic organizations and personal donations. £4 million was received towards construction costs under SRIF1, plus £3.86 million from the University’s SRIF2 allocation and £2 million from the SRIF 3 allocation. Other major funding was received from Scottish Enterprise (£2 million), The Wolfson Foundation (£2 million), the European Regional Development Fund (£1.4 million), commercial income generated by the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit (£3 million) and overhead income generated by the School of Life Sciences (£2.5 million) and £100,000 from the Dundee City Council.

In April 2003 and Dundee-born Hollywood actor, Brian Cox agreed to spearhead the fundraising campaign and smaller donations were received from our own fundraising events and many personal donations.

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