Facilities and research environment in Life Sciences

World-class facilities, run by specialists, in a collegiate research environment. Open to our researchers, students and industry partners.

Everything on one site

Our research complex is four physically interlinked buildings in the centre of Dundee, with the Centre for Targeted Protein Degradation and the Life Sciences Innovation Hub directly across the road. Every facility listed below is a few minutes' walk from the others, so multi-technique projects run in parallel rather than in sequence, and problems get solved in a corridor rather than an email thread.

What you can access

  • Specialist facilities and services. The facilities listed below take commercial work directly, from single-sample analysis to multi-year programmes.
  • Contract research and consultancy. Delivered by our own scientists, in laboratories equipped for chemistry, biochemistry and microbiology, tissue culture to containment levels 1–3, designated radioisotope work, established model organism suites (yeast, Drosophila, Xenopus laevis, C. elegans) and a high-specification computational biology facility.
  • Space of your own. Flexible lab and office space to rent at the Life Sciences Innovation Hub, for companies that want to be based alongside us.
Facilities available for external users

Please check individual facilities for further details.

Research facilities

  • Research facility

    Cryo-Electron Microscopy

    This facility provides access to state-of-the-art equipment and advice aimed at enabling users to characterise samples at high resolution

  • Research facility

    Data Analysis Group (DAG)

    We collaborate on projects covering all aspects of bioinformatics and data analysis

  • Research facility

    Drug Discovery Unit

    We translate basic science into lead compounds to validate putative drug targets, to use as tools to investigate disease pathways and, when appropriate, advance to pre-clinical drug candidates

  • Research facility

    Dundee Imaging Facility

    We provide light and electron microscopy resources, with a central hub in Life Sciences and facilities in Science and Engineering and on the Ninewells campus.

  • Research facility

    FingerPrints Proteomics Facility

    We provide a state of the art Proteomics and Mass Spectrometry capability to researchers and external academic and industrial clients across the globe

  • Research facility

    Life Sciences Innovation Hub

    The Dundee Life Sciences Innovation Hub offers flexible, state-of-the-art lab and office facilities to rent designed to help life sciences companies thrive.

  • Research facility

    MRC PPU Reagents and Services

    We produce and supply thousands of reagents and provide scientific services to academics and pharmaceutical companies across the globe

The expertise behind the equipment

Instruments are the easy part. Our facilities are run by career specialists who spend their working lives on these platforms, supported by Central Technical Services, laboratory management, health and safety, IT and stores. You get experiment design and interpretation as well as data - and results that hold up to scrutiny, whether they're heading for a regulator, an investor or a journal.

Working with us

We work with companies from early-stage biotech to global pharma, confidentiality agreements, contract research and consultancy arrangements are routine, and we can usually scope a project quickly.

Our standard terms and conditions for external work are available to review before you get in touch.

Sustainability

We work to reduce the environmental footprint of our research, which matters increasingly to partners reporting on their own supply chains. 

Read more on our sustainability page.