26 June 2012
Sir Philip Cohen honoured at symposium
A veritable 'who's-who' in biology has gathered in Dundee this week in recognition of the work of Professor Sir Philip Cohen.
In April this year, Sir Philip stood down as Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee to concentrate full-time on his own laboratory research. At this point it was 21 years since Sir Philip became Director of the MRC-PPU and just over 40 years since he arrived in Dundee.
Since Philip Cohen arrived in Dundee in 1971, as well as becoming one of the world's mostly highly cited biochemists and a leader in his field, he has been a major driving force in putting Dundee on the map in scientific terms. Not only did he establish the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit, the award-winning Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) and the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling (SCILLS) but he also played major roles in setting up the Wellcome Trust Biocentre and the Sir James Black Centre, all at the University of Dundee.
According to information published by the Institute for Scientific Information Philadelphia, he was the UK's 3rd most cited scientist from 1990-1999, the world's 2nd most cited scientist in "Biology and Biochemistry" from 1992-2003 and the world's most cited biochemist from 1999-2009.
Around 180 delegates have gathered in Dundee for the symposium, many of them coming from overseas including Australia, USA, Canada, Malaysia and Singapore.
Professor Dario Alessi, who has succeeded Sir Philip as Director of MRC-PPU, the DSTT and SCILLS, said, "This is a great celebration in honour of Sir Philip and his many achievements at Dundee. He continues to be an inspiration to many of us, as well as an outstanding scientist who is still making hugely important findings. It is no surprise that so many eminent people have come to Dundee for this very special event."
Highlights of the symposium include talks from Nobel Laureates Tim Hunt and Eddy Fischer.
In the final talk of the meeting Philip will reflect on the past 21 years and speak about his future research plans, in particular aspects of his recent research on innate immunity, the area he switched his lab to about five years ago.
NOTES TO EDITORS
Professor SirPhilip Cohen - biographical note.
Philip Cohen was born in Edgware, Middlesex on July 22, 1945 and educated at Hendon County Grammar School (1956-1963) and University College London (1963-1969), obtaining B.Sc. and PhD degrees in Biochemistry, the latter in 1969 under the supervision of Michael Rosemeyer. He has also received six honorary doctorates from four Universities in Scotland and the Universities of Linkoping (Sweden) and Debrecen (Hungary, 2004). From 1969-1971 he was a NATO/SRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA with Edmond Fischer before being appointed to a Lectureship in Biochemistry at the University of Dundee in October 1971. He was promoted to Reader in 1977 and to Professor of Enzymology in 1981. From 1975-1978 he held a Wellcome Trust Special Fellowship, while from 1984 to 2010 he was a Royal Society Research Professor. He was Director of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit from 1990-2012 and the Director of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signaling from 2008-2012.
During his career, Philip has helped to transform the perception of protein phosphorylation from a mechanism confined to the control of glycogen metabolism, to a process that regulates most aspects of cell life. He described some of the first examples of enzymes controlled by "multisite phosphorylation', identified three of the first five calmodulin-dependent enzymes to be discovered, and purified, characterized and classified the major serine/threonine-specific protein phosphatases. He made important contributions to our understanding of glycogen metabolism and its regulation including dissection of the signaling pathway "downstream" of phosphatidylinositol (PI) 3-kinase by which insulin stimulates glycogen synthase. He made numerous contributions to our understanding of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase cascades, and their physiological roles. In collaborations with Pharma, he characterized some of the first potent and relatively specific inhibitors of serine/threonine protein kinases. For these and other discoveries, he has been awarded many international and national research prizes, including the Prix Van Gysel of the Belgian Royal Academies of Medicine (1992), the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1997), the Pfizer Innovation Award for Europe (1999), the Sir Hans Krebs Medal of FEBS (1991), the Bristol-Myers Squibb Distinguished Achievement Award in Metabolic Research (2002), the Debrecen Award for Molecular Medicine (2004) and the Rolf Luft Prize of the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm (2006). He also received the Colworth (1977) and Novartis (2001) Medals of the Biochemical Society, and was the honorary President of the Society from 2006-2008.
During his career, Philip has published 514 papers and reviews and one book, entitled "Control of Enzyme Activity and delivered over 300 invited lectures at international meetings. His H-index is 127 (i.e. 127 papers cited at least 127 times), with ten of his papers cited between 1000 and 3000 times.
Philip was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 1982, and to the Fellowships of the Royal Society of London and of Edinburgh in 1984, receiving their Royal Medals in 2004 and 2008, respectively. He delivered the Royal Society's Croonian Prize Lecture in 1998, the world's oldest scientific lecture. He was Knighted in 1998 for "Services to Biochemistry" and elected a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2008.
Philip has trained 42 Ph.D. students and 56 postdocs so far, of whom 55 are now Principal Investigators in Universities or Research Institutes, while 20 others made their careers in Pharma/Biotech and 10 founded their own biotechnology companies. Four of his former students and postdocs have been elected FRS, three FRSE and one FRSC. He recruited 59 of the current Principal Investigators at Dundee between 1985 and 2006, of whom eight have subsequently been elected FRS, and 11 have been elected members of EMBO.
Philip arrived in Dundee in 1971, when the Biochemistry Department he joined comprised about half a dozen Principal Investigators and a handful of Ph.D. Students housed in converted stables. Since then Philip has played a major role in putting Dundee on the scientific map. He not only established the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit in 1991, the award-winning Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) in 1998 and the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling (SCILLS) in 2008, but also set up the Wellcome Trust Biocentre and, with Mike Ferguson the Sir James Black Centre. The MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit has grown from two programme Leaders (Philip and his wife Tricia) and 15 staff to 10 research teams about 125 staff today, while the College of Life Sciences at Dundee has grown to 1060 staff from 62 countries.
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