University of Dundee £11m injection for labs

A consortium of five of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies aims to help tackle global diseases with funding of almost £11 million to support links with the University of Dundee. AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck KGaA and Pfizer are giving core funding of £10.8 million to the Division of Signal Transduction Therapy (DSTT), a collaboration between the companies and 13 Dundee research teams. Sir Philip Cohen, one of DSTT's co-directors, said: "Collaborations between academic laboratories and the pharmaceutical industry typically last a few years. Therefore to maintain and expand support until 2012, when three of the participating companies will have been funding the DSTT for 14 years, is unprecedented; we must be doing something right."