Sir Philip Cohen received a Lifetime Achievement Award at Scotland’s Life Sciences annual Dinner and Awards Ceremony on the evening of March 16th 2023.
The event took place at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh and saw awards bestowed across a series of categories recognising achievements in skills development, innovation, investment, innovative collaboration, and business leadership.
The award was presented to Sir Philip by Ivan McKee, the Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise in the Scottish Government, who congratulated Philip on his outstanding contribution to the industry and the impact of his research, which has helped establish the University of Dundee as an international centre of excellence in life sciences.
Philip said, “It is a great honour to have received a Lifetime Achievement Award for the contributions that my research team has made over more than 50 years to the understanding of ‘phosphorylation’, a biological control mechanism that regulates most aspects of cell life.”
“For 25 years no pharmaceutical or biotechnology company had any interest in what I was doing but the situation could not be more different now. Today, the enzymes that regulate phosphorylation, called ‘protein kinases, have become the pharmaceutical industry’s most popular class of drug target and 75 new drugs have been approved for clinical use since 2001 that target particular kinases.”
“They have led to major improvements in the way that we now treat cancers and some other diseases with annual worldwide sales approaching $100 billion per annum. The important take home message is that it may take years or even decades until fundamental knowledge about a particular area reaches the stage where it becomes obvious how it can be exploited to improve health and/or create wealth.”
“This shows how important it is for Governments to continue to provide sustained long term funding for basic research or massive opportunities will be missed. The history of protein phosphorylation is an excellent example of this.”
Below Left: Philip Cohen (left) begins his talk by thanking Ivan McKee (right) for presenting the award and for his valiant (but unsuccessful) attempts to pronounce the words “Phosphorylation” and “Ubiquigent” correctly.
Below Right: Minister Ivan McKee enjoys the joke!.
