Life Science – Scotland Signals the Way Ahead

Today, still at Dundee, Sir Philip Cohen and his team are working on the “next area of drug discovery” and, following years of lobbying, Sir Philip’s patience has paid off once again, with the formation of the Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling (SCILLS).

Sir Philip explained his work in layman’s terms: “SCILLS is dedicated to understanding how biological processes are controlled and how they become deregulated in disease, with the long-term aim of helping to develop improved drugs.

“Almost every process in the body is controlled by the addition or removal of phosphate from proteins. This was the basis of my early work in ‘protein phosphorylation’, a control system in the body which is co-ordinated by two classes of enzymes, termed ‘protein kinases’ – which have become the pharmaceutical industry’s most important drug targets – and ‘protein phosphatases’.

“If these chemical reactions don’t work properly, then we have disease. Understanding these processes gives us the potential to understand all diseases.”

The new institute will focus on a similar process called ‘protein ubiquitination’, which is known to regulate almost all aspects of cell life.

The Protein Ubiquitination Unit (PUU) is the first division to be set up at SCILLS. It already has two Programme Leaders and several support teams in place to start research, with an annual budget of £2 million over five years.

“The ubiquitin system is a gigantic potential area for drug discovery and potentially as important as protein phosphorylation,” said Sir Philip.

“There is increasing evidence that abnormal levels of ubiquitination may be a cause or consequence of many diseases, such as cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases.

“That’s why there is growing interest in targeting components of the ubiquitin system to develop novel drugs to treat disease,” he added.

So why is it important to create an institute rather than carry out research within the University?

Sir Philip explained that it is all about focus: “Very simply, the best scientific minds love to spend all their time on pure research, in places where there is an outstanding infrastructure and core support and where they are not distracted by teaching undergraduates. That’s why an institute can be a better research environment, allowing scientists to focus their research on ambitious, long-term projects.”

This is not scientific ‘diva-ness’, as Sir Philip pointed out that seven out of the last eight Nobel prizes for Medicine or Physiology, awarded to scientists in the UK, came out of research institutes.

Sir Philip Cohen admits this is an ambitious long-term project, but playing the ‘long-game’ is an area that he has a considerable track record in.

Life Sciences in Dundee, The City of Discovery

With over 760 researchers and support staff from 55 different countries, the University of Dundee’s College of Life Sciences is a dynamic research environment, offering excellent research opportunities.

And its reputation in Life Sciences is world famous:

• Professor Sir Philip Cohen is the world’s fourth most cited scientist in his field
• 24 of the researchers at Dundee, Scotland are in the top 1% of the world’s most cited scientists in their field
• According to Thompson Scientific in Philadelphia, the University of Dundee is rated number one in Europe in terms of the number of times its scientists’ research papers are quoted by other scientists over the last ten years in biology and biochemistry
• Readers of The Scientist magazine voted the College one of the best scientific institutions in Europe in which to work in both 2005 and its latest poll in 2006

The success of the College of Life Sciences has attracted a number of biotechnology companies to Dundee – today 15% of the local economy is derived from biotech companies and their employees.