12 May 2005

Dundee Life Scientists Share £12m Proteomics Technology Grant

Ten scientists based in the 3 major Scottish Life Sciences Centres of Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow have scooped the UK's Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Proteomic Technology (IRColl) grant.

Three of the ten scientists, Professor Paul Crocker, Professor Angus Lamond and Dr Nick Morrice are based in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee.

The IRColl award is £10.2 m over 6 years of which Dundee will receive £1.55 m to fund equipment and the salaries of postdoctoral researchers and technicians. Dundee will also receive £109k from a £0.9 m award from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) to strengthen the research infrastructure, and will further benefit from the establishment of a £0.9 m Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) to train PhD students in this area of Life Sciences.

Paul Crocker will collaborate with Professor Mike Ferguson to further our understanding of how cells of the immune system communicate with each other. This work will have implications for infectious diseases and autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis.

Professor Angus Lamond and co-workers will study the dynamic movements of proteins within human cells. This work is important in understanding how cells grow and respond to changes in their environment in diseases such as cancer.

Nick Morrice, who is based in the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit at Dundee will use his share of the grant to advance projects vital to the Unit's research into the causes of cancer, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

The research collaboration is coordinated by Professor Walter Kolch and Dr Andrew Pitt at the University of Glasgow, and the research activities of the IRColl will be overseen by a scientific advisory board headed by Professor David Goodlett, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.

Professor Kolch said, "Understanding the human proteome has the potential to help tackle major medical challenges. The research being funded by this grant will help to develop technologies that could bring us closer to understanding how some diseases work and the best way to tackle them."

Proteomics is the study of the protein complement of a cell, tissue or organism. By studying protein expression, characterising the post-translational modifications and protein -protein interactions etc, insights into the function of a protein predicted by a genomic sequence can be obtained.

The money to fund the IRColl has been provided by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The DTC is being funded by BBSRC and EPSRC with support from the Medical Research Council.

BBSRC Chief Executive, Professor Julia Goodfellow, said, "The deciphering of the human genome has highlighted the urgent need to analyse the proteins it expresses and the way they interact. It is estimated that the approximately thirty thousand human genes could give rise to as many as one million different protein functions. Unravelling this complexity is an immense challenge and this research into new technologies will be a major step in furthering our understanding."

By Roddy Isles, Head of Press 01382 344910, out of hours: 07968298585, r.isles@dundee.ac.uk