2 August 2005
Drug screening project nets £1.5 million
A new facility based at the University of Dundee which will allow drug targets discovered in
Scottish universities to be tested against up to 100,000 chemicals has been awarded almost £1.5
million from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council.
The Scottish Facility for Compound Screening and Library Synthesis is a joint project between the
Universities of Dundee, Glasgow and St Andrews. The facility will be housed within the new £20
million Centre for Interdisciplinary Research at the University of Dundee, which is leading the
project.
The compound screening facility will allow drug targets against infectious diseases, cancer,
diabetes and allergy to be tested against up to 100,000 chemicals.
The handful of so-called 'hit' chemicals found from these screens will be commercialised as
research tools and/or used as the starting point for developing new medicines.
"This facility will be a key tool in what is termed translational research, turning basic research
carried out in the laboratory into practical applications," said Professor Michael Ferguson, of the
Division of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Microbiology at Dundee.
"In the course of our basic research we identify targets, often enzymes, that do a specific job of
work, which if we can switch off or turn on can do things like put right a defect in cells or kill
off other damaging processes.
"Using the screening process we test these targets against tens of thousands of different chemicals
and thus find which chemicals affect which targets."
The facility will be headed by Professor Julie Frearson, recently appointed to the first Chair of
Biotechnology in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee. Professor Frearson has an
outstanding reputation in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries for successfully
delivering on target screening and drug development projects.
The £1.4 million award has been made through SHEFC's Strategic Research Development Grant.
The new facility is a key part of a wider project in translational research that represents a
tremendous investment by the University of Dundee and its sponsors.
The construction, equipping and staffing of the new laboratories for translational research is
projected to cost around £13 million over the next 5 years. In addition to the SRDG grant,
significant funding has already been secured from The Wolfson Foundation and The European Regional
Development Fund and negotiations for the remainder are at an advanced stage.
Professor Ferguson commented, "One of the principal roles of SRDG grants is to provide
infrastructure and capability that stimulates further investment in scientific research in
Scotland. I think we can already say that this will be more than fulfilled in this case."
By Roddy Isles, Head of Press 01382 344910, out of hours: 07968298585, r.isles@dundee.ac.uk | 
