A new £26 million medical research centre home to 900 scientists has opened at Dundee University in a bid to further collaboration and drug discoveries.
With funding from public, private and charitable sources, staff at the Discovery Centre will work developments in medicine, life sciences and software development.
About £31 million of research grants are also in place to fund the work of the centre.
The majority of staff will move from other campus buildings but the Discovery Centre will provide 180 new “high-value” jobs, the university said.
Professor Michael Ferguson, regius professor of life sciences, said: “This is a major new facility which will significantly boost Scotland’s biomedical sector and help us make an impact on people’s lives around the globe.
“The centre will further develop our already very strong drug discovery programmes in neglected tropical diseases and in other areas of unmet medical need, such as cancer, inflammation and eczema.”
Departments including computational biology, bioinformatics, biophysics, data analysis and quantitative proteomics will all be housed in the centre.
“These highly-interdisciplinary and high-tech activities are essential the future of life sciences research and provide many opportunities,” Prof Ferguson added.
“The centre will also provide an in-house biotech spin-out ‘pre-incubator’ where fledgling spin-out companies can be nurtured before reaching critical mass.”
The Discovery Centre was opened by Sir Paul Nurse, who won a Nobel prize in 2001 for his work on cell growth and division and potential new cancer treatments.
Sir Paul, who is also president of the Royal Society of London, said he was delighted to see the centre in action.
He added: “Life sciences research in Dundee has an international reputation and this new centre provides exciting opportunities to bring different disciplines together, each bringing expertise to bear on aspects of larger, systems-level problems relating to biology, drug discovery and drug design.”
For more on this story, see Thursday’s Courier or try our digital edition.