Philip Cohen: playing to win

What links a champion woman runner, a premier-league soccer team, and a 53 year old male biochemist? Citizens of Dundee, Scotland’s fourth largest city, will know the answer: all three are local heroes. And no wonder biochemist Philip Cohen is a local hero. Over the past nearly 30 years, he has played midwife to the birth of a scientific megapolis on the banks of the River Tay. Today, redundant shipyards and jute factories have given way to research laboratories and technology parks. Biomedical research is now the city’s third largest industry, and growing. Already, it rivals Oxford and Cambridge as a centre of bioscientific excellence. Explanations of the ‘Dundee phenomenon’ vary, but generally begin or end with Philip Cohen. “He has turned a sleepy provincial university into one of the best biochemistry departments in the country,” says one fellow biochemist. “Most people start by thinking Dundee is the last place they’d want to work,” comments a university colleague. “Then Philip persuades them to come.” His scientific reputation is part of the lure. A pioneer in the study of protein phosphorylation, he is now “one of the top three people in the world in the field of signal transduction,” says one US-based ex-student. Cohen is generally thought to be smart but, what’s more, he is arguably Britain’s most accomplished scientific entrepreneur. A Royal Society Research Professor since 1984, he persuaded the Medical Research Council to fund a Protein Phosphorylation Unit in Dundee in 1990. Two years ago, he celebrated the opening of a new laboratory, built with £10 million from the Wellcome Trust along with hefty contributions from other benefactors, including the late novelist Catherine Cookson and film star Sean Connery. Recently, he has won drug-company sponsorship for a new Signal Transduction Therapy division. Last year he was knighted.