| He said the opening was a statement that “the expertise built up in this great university will be used to help some of the poorest, weakest and frailest citizens in he world.”
He said it gave hope to the thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa who die unnecessarily and avoidably each year.
Mr Brown was joined by Sir Dominic Cadbury, chairman of the board of governors of the Wellcome Trust, which last year donated £8.1 million – one of its largest ever grants – to the team led by Professors Mike Ferguson and Alan Fairlamb to help establish the drug discovery unit, the first facility of its kind in the UK.
Based in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, a building completed in August, it is part of the university’s School of Life Sciences.
The aim is to translate basic research discoveries into candidate drugs ready for clinical trials to help cure a range of tropical diseases which have attracted little or no interest from pharmaceutical companies.
These include African sleeping sickness, Chagas’ disease and leishmaniasis which affect millions of the world’s poorest people, causing at least 140,000 deaths each year.
The parasites which cause them are spread by blood-sucking insects and at present there are no vaccine.
Mr Brown lamented the small amount of money spent on health care in Africa, which at $13 per capita is a tiny fraction of that spent in the world’s richest countries.
He said there was a need for the developed world to do more to help, and explained that during the G8 summit at Gleneagles a number of decisions were taken to devote more resources to health care in Africa.
The scientific community had a vital role to play in this effort, and he was delighted that Dundee University was working hard to meet that agenda.
The university’s work was in keeping with Dundee’s great international tradition, he stated, and he hoped it would save a large number of lives in years to come
Sir Alan Langlands, principal of Dundee University, said, “We are delighted to have the Chancellor here today.
“What we are trying to do with the Drug Discovery Unit is virtually unprecedented in academia, but with the excellent team we have put in place we are positive we can make a real difference.”
Professor Fairlamb said, “Our initiative will fill the gap left by the pharmaceutical industry.”
“If we are to meet the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, then better, safer treatments are needed to break the vicious cycle of poverty and disease.”
The Chancellor and Sir Dominic also heard presentations from Professor Sir Philip Cohen, director of research for the School of Life Sciences.
Mr Brown also praised the contribution of Dundee University to the local economy. He believed it represented the third phase in the city’s economic development, which began with the jute industry and continued with the electronics industry.
A growing number of companies were being “spun-out” from Dundee University scientific research, and he was impressed that 16% of the local economy now came from life sciences and biotechnology. |
