£26m Discovery Centre opens at Dundee

Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate and President of The Royal Society of London Sir Paul opened the University of Dundee’s £26million Discovery Centre last month, a home to researchers supported by over £31million of research grants, bringing the investment in the total operation to well over £57million.

The Discovery Centre enhances the University’s world leading life sciences capacity, including in drug discovery – and has provided 180 new, externally-funded, high-value jobs for Scotland's Life Sciences sector. They will join around 900 scientists, research students and support staff from 61 countries who are already based in the College of Life Sciences at Dundee. Incorporating a new research division of Computational Biology, it will also provide an in-house biotech spin-out “pre-incubator” for fledgling companies.

“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,” said Professor Michael Ferguson, Regius Professor of Life Sciences at Dundee.

“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.”

Sir Paul Nurse said, “I am delighted to be opening the Discovery Centre. 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.”