NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Wellcome Trust has awarded £11.3 million ($17.7 million) to fund two research groups at the University of Dundee in Scotland engaging in basic genomics and applied genetics research, Dundee said today.
One of the new Wellcome Trust grants will provide £5.4 million to the Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression (GRE), and the other award will provide £5.9 million to establish the Centre for Dermatology and Genetic Medicine.
The GRE Centre was established in 2008 and the grant will continue to fund the center for another five years. The GRE Centre's research focuses on gene expression, particularly using proteomics and life cell imaging to understand protein function. The GRE has 13 principal investigators and around 100 scientists, and offers resources for proteomics, microscopy, and high performance computing.
Wellcome Trust's funding for the GRE so far has been used to support these general infrastructure and staff, which are made available to other university researchers.
GRE Centre Director Angus Lamond said in a statement, "This grant will support and develop technology and expertise in microscopy, mass spectrometry, computing and proteomics, which is essential to our research. By using these technologies in our experiments we can gain a deep understanding of cell growth and regulation and how these cellular mechanisms go wrong in a range of human diseases."
The funding for the Centre for Dermatology and Genetic Medicine, to be led by Dundee professor Irwin McLean, will support 18 new research posts, including 15 full-time staff positions.
McLean said the award "will allow us to rapidly expand our capability to find the causes of the remaining unsolved skin conditions using cutting edge genome sequencing technology and to expand our dermatology drug discovery program."