£4.1 million for new research into protein interactions in our cells

Doctoral Training Centre receives five year funding for multidisciplinary research<em> - News</em>

By Danielle Reeves
Monday 30 June 2008

Chemistry, physics, maths and engineering researchers will collaborate with biologists, biochemists and medics to tackle diseases and pave the way for new drug treatments, thanks to a new £4.1 million award made to Imperial College London.

It will fund more than 50 new PhD posts in the Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) of Imperial's Chemical Biology Centre over the next five years. The award has been made by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and includes a contribution from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and Medical Research Council (MRC), with added support from GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Pfizer.

The DTC is a specialist training centre which aims to support a new generation of scientists in taking a physical sciences approach to problems in the life sciences. This involves developing and using novel tools and technologies from the physical sciences and engineering to solve biological and medical problems.

For the next five years, research at the DTC will aim to understand the important but little-understood interactions between proteins, and proteins and lipids, which underpin virtually every process in all living cells. For example, these interactions are involved in all of the signaling processes which enable messages to be carried from the outside to the inside of a cell.

When a cell becomes diseased faults in these interactions appear. However, at the moment scientists do not know exactly how these protein interactions work, or precisely what role they play in diseases.

The funding will be used to train the next generation of multidisciplinary scientists

Professor Richard Templer, Director of the DTC, explains that unlocking the secrets of these molecules and their relationships with each other could lead to the identification of new drug targets for cancers and various other diseases:

"If we can understand how protein and lipid molecules interact with each other, then we have the basis for designing drugs that can disrupt or manipulate the very processes that occur inside our cells when they become diseased," he says.

At the College's Doctoral Training Centre, early career researchers will be able to develop and apply innovative new approaches to measuring, modelling, recording and analysing these important sub-cellular processes in more detail than ever before.

This will include using imaging techniques such as fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) and fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), combined with state-of-the-art imaging systems developed in the Department of Physics.

Researchers will also apply computer modelling techniques normally used in mathematics and engineering to predict and analyse the behaviour and relationships of these molecules, and their roles in processes such as the spread of disease.

Imperial's Professor David Klug, co-Chair of the Chemical Biology Centre welcomed the news of the EPSRC's funding, saying: "I'm delighted that we have secured support for another five years for our Doctoral Training Centre. The impact of this new generation of students is already starting to be felt. This kind of multidisciplinary approach, which encourages researchers to break down traditional barriers between life sciences and physical sciences, will be key if we're to crack some of the toughest challenges in drug development and basic biology."

The Doctoral Training Centre was established in 2003 as part of Imperial's Chemical Biology Centre. More information about the Centre, including how to apply for studentships, can be found here: www.chemicalbiology.ac.uk 

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