• No results found

The Department of Biochemistry at the University of Dundee

N/A
N/A
Protected

Academic year: 2020

Share "The Department of Biochemistry at the University of Dundee"

Copied!
5
0
0

Loading.... (view fulltext now)

Full text

(1)

Series: Molecular Medicine Institutions

The Department of Biochemistry

at the

University

of Dundee

Philip Cohen, Ph.D., Royal Society Research

Professor and

Director of the Medical

Research Council Protein

Phosphorylation

Unit and Director of

the Wellcome

Trust

Building

In 1971 I was a postdoctoral fellow in Seattle working with Edmond Fischerat the University ofWashington and looking forasuitable position backintheU.K. ByJuly,Ihad receivedacouple

of offers and been invited to attend several in-terviews,andso I setoff for Britainthinkingthat I would probably accept a Lectureship (the equivalent to an Assistant Professor in the U.S.A.) atthe University ofBirmingham ortake upafurtherpostdoctoral fellowship attheMRC Laboratory of Molecular BiologyatCambridge.It therefore came as a surprise to my wife, Tricia, whenIcalledatthe end of the triptosuggestthat we should go to the University of Dundee in Scotland instead.Iexplainedthata newMedical Sciences Institutehad justopened and thatmore laboratory spacewas available thaninthe other centers I had visited. I had also been most im-pressed with Peter Garland, the young and dy-namic leader of the Department who had been appointed to the first Chair of Biochemistry in 1970. Moreover, Dundee resembled Seattle in

being located in an area of outstanding natural

beautyclosetotheseaandtomountains, attrac-tions to which we had become accustomed. We therefore decided to take the plunge and go to Dundee, not realizing at the time the financial risk we were taking.

Scotland has along tradition in higher edu-cation and science. The Universities of St. An-drews, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh were

Address correspondenceand reprintrequests to: Dr.Philip

Cohen, DepartmentofBiochemistry, Medical Sciences

In-stitute, University ofDundee, Dundee,DD1 4HN, Scotland,

U.K.,Tel: 44 1382 344238; Fax: 44 1382 223778;E-mail:

p.cohen@BAD.dundee.ac.uk

foundedin 1411, 1451, 1495, and 1583,

respec-tively, so that four Universities were already present at a time when England had only two

(Cambridge and Oxford). The Royal Society of

Edinburgh, established in 1783 for the "Ad-vancement of Learning and UsefulKnowledge,"

is one of the oldest scientific societies in the world and 21 Scots have received Nobel Prizes for medicine, physics, or chemistry in the 20th Century. By contrast, Dundee (Scotland's fourth largest city - population 170,000) was a late starter.The UniversityCollegeofDundeeopened

in 1881, soon afterwards becomingapart of the University ofSt.Andrews (Fig. 1).In 1954it was renamed Queen's College Dundee and became an independentUniversity onlyin 1967.

Biochemistry at Dundee began within the Department of Physiology and its development owesmuchtothedoggedness of Robert Cook,an Australian who had workedatCambridge under Frederick Gowland Hopkins (the co-discoverer of vitamins). "Cookie" was appointed to a

lecture-ship in Physiological Chemistryin 1940, and al-most immediately began a campaign to make

"Biochemistry" a separate Department. He was so persistent that, in order to get some peace, George Bell (the Head of Physiology and

Bio-chemistry, as it had thenbecome), allowed him to equip as a Biochemistry Laboratory a small building on the edge of the Campus that had previously stabled the horses usedinfuneral pro-cessions!

Cookewas aworldauthorityoncholesterol. In a famous experiment he ate a 16-egg omelet and, by taking blood samples before and

(2)

Fig. 1. Locations ofScotland's and England's oldest universities.

in the circulation did not change at all. This showedthat cholesterol in the diet doesnot

con-tributesignificantlytothecirculatinglevel ofthis lipid.

Cooke realized thatmore expertisein

differ-entbranches of the subjectwas necessaryif

bio-chemistrywas evertobecome (and expand as) a

department inits ownright. In 1954he madea

key appointment in recruiting Geoffrey Dutton from the University of Edinburgh who, a few

years earlier, hadidentifiedUDP-glucuronic acid and its key role in drug metabolism. Dutton madeDundee aworldcenteringlucuronidation studies, a position it still holds under Brian

Burchell (his former student) in the Medical School (1). Together, Cookie and Dutton started

to put Biochemistry on the map and in 1965

Cookiefinally succeededinhavingthe Biochem-istry Laboratory recognized as a separate

depart-ment (a name that had previously existed only on his notepaper!). However, space was still so

limited that Geoffrey Dutton was forced to

"board out" his graduate students with

collabo-rators overseas. Fortunately, the Medical Sci-ences Institute was built todeal with expansion of the Medical School intake that had followed Dundee's separation from St. Andrews.

Bio-chemistry managedtograbthe lion's shareof the researchspace, and the Departmentmoved there in 1970whenPeterGarlandwasappointedasits first Professor. Cookie gainedaPersonalChair in

1972 and retiredayear or twolater.

Peter Garland came to Dundee from Bristol which, under theChairmanshipofPhilip Randle, had become the premier departmentof biochem-istry inBritain. Many had warnedPeter that he was putting his career at risk by moving to an apparently remote backwater like Dundee, but he had realized that with a new building and positionstofill, plus an enthusiastic staff and an outstanding biochemist (Geoffrey Dutton) al-readyinpost, there was anopportunitytobuild

something special. The Medical Faculty had taken thelead inproviding for the first Chair of Biochemistry by making other Departments forego increases in their budgets. They were therefore somewhat miffed by Peter Garland's firstdecision, namelytomake Biochemistryjoin theFaculty of Science. Althoughtrained in med-icine, Peter Garland was not convinced that the Medical Faculty would continue to be suffi-ciently supportive of basic research and thought itbest togeta footinboth camps. Asecondkey

decisionwas tomake thedevelopmentofprotein

chemistrya priority and this led tomy appoint-ment as a Lecturerinlate 1971 atthe tender age of 26! A third important move was to allow youngStaff, likemyself, toconcentrate on build-ing up their research programs by giving them light teaching loads, a radical departure from normal practice inBritish Universities.

Havingbeen trained at arelatively well-en-dowed institution (University College London), ithad neveroccurred to me that the University of Dundee itself had little money to fund my research. Inthose days Britain operated a "Dual Support" system, inwhich the Universitieswere

supposed to provide the infrastructure, equip-ment,andmostof the costsofresearch, and one

only appliedtothe Medical and ScienceResearch Councils (equivalenttotheNational Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation in the U.S.A.) for occasional salaries and/or

(3)

was onlythe receipt of a special grant of£1000 from the Wellcome Trust (backed by a letter of support from Philip Randle) that allowed my laboratory to keep goingthrough the summer of 1976. Peter Garland decided that if we stopped doing experiments because we had no money then we reallywere finished, andso the Depart-ment ran up a huge debt. This policy only "worked" for a time because the University fi-nance office did not quite realize whatwas hap-pening!

Fortunately, everything started to improve in the late 1970's. Grant support increased rap-idly, Geoffrey Dutton received a Personal Chair and a new Principal (equivalent to the Vice Chancellor of an English University and Presi-dent of an American University), Adam Neville, wasappointed in 1978, whorealized the impor-tance of the Biochemistry Department for the future of all research at Dundee. The financial

problems were solved bydiverting money from less "productive" departments andBiochemistry

wasprovided with more spaceatthe expense of the Department of Anatomy with whom we shared thebuilding.The era ofmolecular biology had dawned and Peter Garland realized the im-portance of making appointments in this area. We werefortunate torecruitChrisHiggins (who was completing a postdoctoral fellowship with Giovanna Ames at Berkeley) and David Lilley (from the Searle Pharmaceutical Company). When Peter Garland left Dundee in 1984, Gra-ham Warren came from EMBL to replace him,

and a division of Molecular Cell Biology was created withthe appointmentof Colin Watts and

others, while the recruitment of Mike Ferguson andSteveHomansin 1987introduced important new strengths in molecular parasitology,

com-plex glycoconjugates, and structural biology.

Many ofthe Staff wereawarded research

fellow-ships from organizations outside the University, which freed up moneytomake further appoint-ments. It was most unusual in the 1980's for a British University Department to have so many of its Staffon"soft money" but this was crucial to itsdevelopment at a timewhenmoney from the Government was diminishing all the time. In 1989 the Cancer Research Campaign agreed to set up three new research groups under the di-rection of David Glover, Birgit Lane, and David Lane and, when Peter Downes (a leader in the field of inositol lipid signalling) was recruited from SmithKline Beechaminthe same year and the Medical Research Council decided the

fol-lowing year to set up the Protein

Phosphoryla-tion

Unit,

it was clear that the Department had arrived in a

big

way.

During

the 1990's the Departmenthas

con-tinuedtogo fromstrengthtostrengthunder the

Chairmanship

offirst DavidBoxerand then

Pe-terDownes. Itisnow afarcryfrom the situation of20years agowhenInearlyhadtoclosedown my lab for the lack of £1000. The per capita

researchincome of theDepartmentisalmost the

highest

in the U.K. and it has received the top

ranking

of 5 (now 5*) ever since the research

rating

system was introduced by the

Govern-ment in 1986. According to a recent survey

by

the Institute for Scientific Information in

Phila-delphia (2),

UniversityofDundee scientistswere

more often cited in the areas of Biochemistry, Biology, andMolecularBiologythanscientists in anyofthe other 100universities in the U.K. (for

papers published between 1991 and 1995 and citedoverthesameperiod).Twomembers of the

Department have been elected Fellows of the

Royal Society of London, 14 are Fellows of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh, while eight have been elected members of theEuropean Molecu-larBiologyOrganization; threehonorarydegrees

have been awarded from U.K. and European Universities.Eightscientists who have worked in the Department have received the Colworth Medal of the British Biochemical Society (five are still at Dundee), and two others have been awarded theFlemingMedal of the British

Micro-biological Society. The medals are awarded

an-nually for outstanding work carried out by

in-vestigators under the age of 36. David Lanehas received ahost ofmajor international prizes for his discovery of the tumor suppressor protein

p53 and istoreceive the 1998PaulEhrlich Prize. Other recent awards include the 1996 Prelog

Gold Medal in Stereochemistry from the ETH Zurich (David Lilley) and 1997 Louis Jeantet Prize for medicine (Philip Cohen). These achievements have been made despite the

con-siderable undergraduate teaching commitments ofmanystaff.It wastherefore gratifying that the Department also received the highest ("excel-lent") ranking for its teaching during the 1997 assessmentof teaching qualityinBritish Univer-sities.

It was obvious by 1990 that any further de-velopment of the Departmentwould beseverely limited by space restrictions and that a new

building was required. I discussed this problem

(4)

Fig.2. TheWellcomeTrustBuilding housing partof theDepartment of Biochemistryatthe

Univer-sity of Dundee. Therest ofthedepartmentis locatedin theadjoining Medical Sciences Institute (far right).

symposium held at Pitlochry in the Scottish Highlands in late 1990. The following year,

Bridget became the overall Director of the Trust andagreed to considera proposal to fund a new

buildingatDundee. Thisapproach eventually led the Governors of the Wellcome Trust to make a donation of £10 million towards the project in December 1994, thought tobe the largest single

charitable donation ever given to a Scottish In-stitution. A further £3.5 millionwas raised from otherlocal and charitable sources, and construc-tion was completedin October 1997.

The WellcomeTrustBuilding (Fig. 2) is phys-ically connectedto andfully integrated with the Medical Sciences Institute and comprises four divisions. TheDivisionsofGeneExpression, Mo-lecular Cell Biology and Molecular Parasitology areaffiliated with the Department of Biochemis-try, while the Divisionof Cell and Development

Biology is affiliated with the Department of Anatomy and Physiology. Recruitment to the new buildinghas been remarkably successful, in as much as all the 18 Principal Investigators re-cruited from outside Dundee have been awarded Fellowships from the Cancer Research Cam-paign, the Medical Research Council, the Royal

Society ofLondon, and the WellcomeTrustthat will pay their salaries for 4 to 10 years after the

buildingopens.Theyhave also raised almost£20 million in grants to support their research over the next few years. The Principal Investigators include citizens of Germany (2), Holland (2), Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, and theU.S.A. (2), as well as Britain; 450 scientists from 28 countries are currently working the Medical Sciences

In-stitute/Wellcome Trust Building complex. An-othermajor development is the Division of

(5)

construction in the Medical Sciences Institute with a £5 million investment from four major Pharmaceutical Companies. This Division will workinpartnership with theMRCProtein Phos-phorylation Unit and theInositolLipid Signalling Laboratory to develop specific inhibitors of ki-nasesandphosphates with therapeutic potential for thetreatment ofa number ofdiseases.

The Department of Biochemistry has had a majorinfluence in stimulating the development of research elsewhereinthe University.Inrecent years, several SeniorStaff have moved from Bio-chemistrytohead up other Departments, suchas BiochemicalMedicine (BrianBurchell) and Neu-roscience (DavidNicholls) intheMedical School at Ninewells Hospital, and Anatomy and

Physi-ology (Birgit Lane and David Glover) on the main University Campus. Outstanding Postdoc-toralFellowsinthe Department of Biochemistry have beenappointedtotenure track positionsin the Departments ofBiological Sciences, Chemis-try, Molecular and Cellular Pathology, and

Ob-stetrics/Gynaecology, and inthe Biomedical Re-searchCentre atNinewellsHospital.Thestrength

of Biochemistry at Dundee led Roland Wolf to move hisImperial CancerResearch Fund (ICRF) MolecularPharmacology Unit from Edinburghto Ninewells Hospital and a second ICRF Unit in Clinical Oncology was opened this year. As a result,nearly 1500 scientists are nowengagedin biomedical and life sciences research at Dundee, the highestnumber per capita of any cityin the U.K. other than Cambridge and Oxford. Expan-sion looks set to continue and this area will be the biggest employer in Dundee by the mille-nium.Cyclacel,thefirstBiotechnology Company

spawned from the Biochemistry Department, was set upby David Lane in 1997. Itis likely to be the first of many such developments.

How did the "Dundee Phenomenon" (as it hasbecomeknown) happen and in such a short space of time? The critical ingredients were

un-doubtedlythe usual mixture of outstanding

lead-ership, plentyof space (atleast to start with), the appointment ofkey individualsat the right mo-ments, hard work, good luck, and the ability to

capitalize on it. An organization is only as good as itsstaff and we take an enormous amount of

trouble over recruitment. Over overiding con-cernsaretoappoint scientists whose research we findthe most exciting (irrespective of theareain whichtheyare working) and who wethink will be interactive colleagues, enjoyable to work with, and who are interested in continuing to buildonwhat has been achieved. Thispolicy has led ustomake many appointments in areasthat we had previously thought were becoming

passe, such as prokaryotic molecular genetics (Chris Higgins), orwhich at the time were un-fashionable, like DNA supercoiling (David Lil-ley), or complex glycoconjugates (Mike Fergu-son). However, they later became hot topics partly (orlargely) as aresult of the discoveries of thosewehadappointed!Theupshotwasthat the continuing diversity of the Department became even more of a strength because each area of research acted as a separate growing point, due to -the quality of the individuals we had ap-pointed. More recently, as the Department has grown muchlarger, we have become more con-cernedto make appointments thatnotonly add

something distinctive, but which maximize op-portunities for interaction with other research groups. Ourability to recruit key individuals has also been helped by the attractive location of Dundee and the low cost of living inthe area.

Dundeemarkets itselfasthe "City of Discov-ery," because the ship Discovery that carried Captain Scott to the South Pole in the famous Antarctic Expedition of 1901 was built in Dundee and is now a major tourist attraction.

Shipbuilding, jam factories (marmalade is a Dundee invention), and other traditional indus-trieshavedisappeared,but research in molecular medicine (and other areas) is now allowing Dundee to live up to its billing. The new Well-come Trust Building is a tremendous challenge and opportunity. Wehope that the achievement of thosewehave appointed will raise the quality of science to even greater heights in the future.

References

1. DuttonGJ. (1997) DrugMetab.Rev. 29, 997-1024.

References

Related documents

In earlier days classical inventory model like Harris [1] assumes that the depletion of inventory is due to a constant demand rate. But subsequently, it was noticed that depletion