SCOTLAND’S NEW £10 million national life sciences institute will create 40 jobs when it opens in Dundee later this year.

Recruitment is already taking place as the institute strives to build a world-class research team at Dundee University.

It will bring together some of the world’s top research scientists—under the leadership of world-renowned figure Sir Philip Cohen—with the remit of finding new drugs for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases.

Education Secretary Fiona Hyslop, visiting the university yesterday, said she believed that the pooling of some of the best scientific minds would lead to major breakthroughs.

“I have every confidence that the track record of the world-class researchers will lead to ground- breaking research,” she said.

“Scotland has a fantastic reputation in life sciences and the Scottish Government is very keen to support that.

“Dundee, in particular, is an international centre of excellence for this kind of work, with 16% of its workers involved in or supporting the sector.

“To take this on to a new level, we need a new centre, equipped and managed to the highest standards, to attract outstanding international scientists and most promising young researchers to Scotland. The national institute will deliver that.”

The institute will concentrate on an emerging area of “cell signalling” which has great potential for the development of drugs to treat cancer and chronic inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.

It will create 40 jobs initially, become a new engine for the city’s economy and help drive forward Scotland’s £1 billion life sciences sector.

Sir Philip said scientists would work in teams, building a “critical mass” of knowledge as they search for new ways of treating disease.

They will be based on the top floor of the Sir James Black Centre at the university and are expected to be in close contact with existing scientific research teams there.

It is believed that this combined expertise will create the strongest research complex of its kind in Europe.

Sir Philip said the college of life sciences has already played a key role in developing other areas of cell signalling, and its “pre-eminence” in the field was instrumental in the creation in 1999 of the biotech company Upstate Inc. which employs around 100 people in Dundee.

The division of signal transduction therapy has also been established in collaboration with six of the world’s major pharmaceutical companies, attracting £40 million in funding and securing 50 jobs.