22 October 2008

MRC Unit at Dundee to establish national centre

The Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee has been awarded almost £1million to set up the UK’s National Centre for Protein Kinase Profiling, a unique service which will widen academic access to one of the fastest developing areas of the pharmaceutical industry.

Protein kinases are the largest family of enzymes encoded by the human genome and in recent years have become the pharmaceutical industry’s most important class of drug targets in the quest to develop new treatments for major diseases such as cancer.

This new award from the Medical Research Council’s Strategy Development Group to the Unit in Dundee will enable academic research teams around the world to access kinase profiling services which have previously only been widely available in the commercial sector and either unsuitable or too expensive for many academics to use.

'A major challenge in the development of new treatments is to make drugs that can be specifically targeted to selectively suppress the activity of one or at most a few of the 500 protein kinases encoded by the human genome,' said Professor Sir Philip Cohen, Director of the MRC-PPU at Dundee.

'Currently, some 30% of the research and development budget of the pharmaceutical industry is focused on this area of kinase profiling, and in cancer R&D the figure is even higher at around 50%.'

'In recent years, many academic centres have started to set up their own drug discovery programmes, many of which are also aimed at developing specific inhibitors of protein kinases. These academic centres have great need to gain access to kinase profiling services but those offered commercially are tailored to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry and too expensive for most academics to use.'

'With this new funding the Protein Phosphorylation Unit can make our kinase profiling service widely available to the academic community at a reasonable cost.'

The grant, totalling £989,000, will provide the salaries of three technical staff, and a synthetic organic chemist for five years, plus equipment and a consumables budget that will enable the size of the current panel to be expanded from 80 to 100 kinases.

The Dundee Unit initially established a large panel of protein kinases in 1998, enabling researchers to run kinase profiling tests and helping open up a new niche in the pharmaceutical industry which is now estimated to be worth over US $200 million per annum.

Full details of the service and the cost to Academic users will be made available soon. Further details of the project can be seen at www.kinase-screen.mrc.ac.uk

Notes to editors

Medical Research Council (MRC)
MRC supports the best scientific research to improve human health. Its work ranges from molecular level science to public health medicine and has led to pioneering discoveries in our understanding of the human body and the diseases which affect us all. www.mrc.ac.uk.

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