Photo Opportunity: 11.45 am, Thursday 20 November, Wellcome Trust Biocentre, University of Dundee
New laboratories housing "state of the art" scientific equipment costing £3.5 million will be opened on Thursday 20 November at the University of Dundee.
The Wellcome Trust Laboratories, as they will be called, will be opened by Dr Jacqui Wood MBE and Dr Pat McPherson OBE, Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the Ninewells Cancer Campaign.
The Laboratories were built following a Major Strategic Award in Integrated Biosciences from The Wellcome Trust. This award of £3.5 million has provided the School of Life Sciences with some of the most advanced equipment to study the structure and functions of proteins involved in disease.
The equipment includes Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorters needed to separate different types of living cells from one another, the most advanced and powerful light microscopes with which to study the detailed architecture of living cells, and a second X-ray diffractometer to solve the structures of proteins in atomic detail.
The Laboratories cost £490,000 to construct and included generous donations of £100,000 from the Ninewells Cancer Campaign and £70,000 from Scottish Enterprise Tayside.
Commenting on the opening, Sir Philip Cohen, the Director of the Wellcome Trust Biocentre said "The donations we received from the Ninewells Cancer Campaign and Scottish Enterprise Tayside were critical in allowing us to build these laboratories without delay and so make effective use of this latest major award from the Wellcome Trust. The new laboratories will allow us to enhance our cutting edge research to understand the causes of many diseases and conditions including cancer, allergies, arthritis, and malaria."
Notes to Editor
The Wellcome Trust Biocentre at the University of Dundee in Tayside, opened in 1997 and is one of the world's leading institutes for biomedical research, comprising over 450 scientists from 48 different countries working in over 50 research teams. The major goals of the Biocentre are to understand the causes for many diseases and conditions including allergies, arthritis, cancer, diabetes, genetic disorders, heart disease, skin diseases, hypertension and stroke, as well as tropical diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness. Some of this work has now reached the stage where it is being exploited to develop improved drugs to treat these diseases.
The Wellcome Trust is an independent research-funding charity established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome in 1936. It is funded from a private endowment which is managed with long-term stability and growth in mind. The Trust's mission is to promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health.
By Jenny Marra, Head of Press 01382 344910 j.m.marra@dundee.ac.uk