Pharmaceutical firms give £14m for drug studies

Group Business Correspondent

Monday 14 May 2012

A group of six leading pharmaceuticals firms will provide £14 million funding to help scientists based in Scotland develop drugs to treat illnesses like cancer.

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MARK WILLIAMSON

In a notable endorsement of Scottish life sciences expertise, the group agreed to provide core funding to allow experts at the University of Dundee to spend the next four years working on a programme to accelerate the development of new treatments for a range of major global diseases.

The experts are engaged in long-term projects that are intended to devise ways of counteracting the abnormal amounts of phosphate in proteins that are the cause of many diseases, and related methods of regulating the functions of cells.The funding represents the third renewal of a collaborative programme that started in 1998. It will take the total of funding provided by pharmaceutical firms under the scheme to £50m.The university believes this makes the programme the largest collaboration between the academic community and the pharmaceutical industry.It said the new round of funding would secure 50 posts at Dundee for the next four years. The commitment indicates the pharmaceutical firms are satisfied with the outcome of the collaboration to date.The participating firms share the unpublished research and technology developed by the Dundee laboratories concerned and get first right to licence the intellectual property they generate.Some 37 patents have been filed over past 12 years, while 30 licences have been granted to companies.The work is conducted through the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy, which was founded by Sir Philip Cohen and Professor Pete Downes. The division includes 15 research teams based at the university.Professor Dario Alessi, who will become the new director of the DSTT in July, said: "The University of Dundee is committed to the translation of world-class basic science for health and economic benefits. "Renewal of this collaboration with six of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies is a vote of confidence in that strategy and in Dundee's leadership position in biomedical research."Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: "This is a major endorsement by industry of Scotland's strong life science research capacity and a hugely important investment that will have an impact on health outcomes in Scotland and beyond."

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Pharmaceutical firms give £14m for drug studies

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