£3 million endorsement

photo/media opportunity 12 noon Thursday 8 November, Wellcome Trust Biocentre, Hawkhill, University of Dundee.

In recognition of the scientific excellence of the Medical Research Council Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee the Council has increased the Unit's funding by £3 million bringing its budget for 5 years to almost £7.5 million.

The Unit's Director, Sir Philip Cohen, said: "This is excellent news which acknowledges the Units pre-eminence in this field worldwide and enables us to enhance a cutting-edge research programme which has implications for improving health."

The cash boost came on the back of the Unit's five yearly review which also awarded all the Unit's programmes the highest alpha-plus rating.

The Unit is best known for its research on Type II diabetes. Over the last five years the Unit discovered the major biochemical pathways by which the hormone insulin exerts its effects in humans.

The failure of insulin to transport blood glucose into glycogen -its storage form in muscle and liver- is the cause of Type II diabetes, which affects 3-5% of the population of Britain, including 250,000 Scots, and over 100 million world-wide. But due to its long-term side effects, such as increased risk of heart attack, kidney failure and blindness, it accounts for more than 10% of all health care expenditure. Type II diabetes is predicted to double over the next 20 years.

The Unit's research has suggested new opportunities for the development of improved drugs to treat diabetes and has assisted GlaxoSmithKline develop compounds that mimic the ability of insulin to convert glucose to glycogen by switching off an enzyme called GSK3 that the Unit discovered some years ago.

The latest award will bring the number of scientists working in the MRC Unit to almost 100, making it the largest Unit of its type in the world./ENDS

Notes for Editors

• The Unit's work has implications for understanding cancers and chromic inflammatory diseases and led to five pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca,, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Novo Nordisk and Pfizer investing £7.6million in July 1998 to set the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT) in the School of Life Sciences.
• At Bio 1999, the major annual conference of the Biotechnology Industry,Pfizer described the DSTT as their most important academic collaboration world-wide and awarded Sir Philip their Innovation Prize for Europe.
• One of the Unit's Team Leaders, Dario Alessi, was awarded the Colworth Medal of the British Biochemical Society, the premier research award for young scientists under the age of 36. Dario was also named European Young Investigator of the Year by the German company, Eppendorf.
• The MRC Unit was established in October 1990.
• All the Unit's past and future programmes directed by the Unit's team leaders were awarded the highest alpha-plus rating in the MRC five yearly review.