science/technology
OXFORD CHEMISTRY SETS SIGHTS HIGH Investment bank provides $30 million toward Oxford's new lab in return for equity rights to future spinoff companies Richards, who is chairman of the department. 'The new laboratory will afford opporxford University's chemistry de- tunities for interdisciplinary research and partment, one of the largest and cross-disciplinary research within the most distinguished chemistry de- subdisciplines of chemistry," Richards partments in the Western world, has tells C&EN. 'We have identified three raised venture capital and other funding major research themes for the laboratofor the construction of a $100 million re- ry: synthesis and molecular design, chemical and molecular biology, and insearch laboratory. Scheduled for completion in 2003, terfacial and materials science." the laboratory will be the first newly Construction of the building started in constructed chemistry laboratory to be September with a ceremony during built at the university in 50 years and which Maureen Christian, Lord Mayor of will provide facilities for experimental Oxford, performed the groundbreaking. research in chemistry and related bioBeeson Gregory Ltd., a City of Lonlogical and physical sciences. don-based investment banking business "We believe that the new laboratory that focuses on Europewill provide the best possible environ- an growth companies ment for research and enable us not and provides corporate only to maintain our position as one of finance and brokering the world's leading chemistry depart- services to its corporate ments, but also to enhance that posi- clients, will provide tion and our links with industry," de- $30 million toward the clares chemistry professor W. Graham state-of-the-art building Michael Freemantle C&EN London
O
Computer-generated designs for the exterior and Interior of the new
laboratory.
in a joint venture with the university. The university will, in return, transfer half of its future rights to equity in spinoff—which the British call spin-out— companies arising from the chemistry department to Beeson Gregory for the next 15 years. "This marks a landmark partnership between a City investment bank and one of the country's leading research institutions involving the commercialization of their intellectual property assets," said Andrew Beeson, chief executive of Beeson Gregory, in a statement released when the joint venture was announced last month. "We are looking forward to our team making a significant contribution to the ultimate value of the chemistry department's research and to playing a role in helping keep the department in its preeminent position worldwide." Previous companies spun offfromthe chemistry department include Oxford Asymmetry, which was founded in 1992 by Oxford professor of organic chemistry Steve Davies; Oxford Molecular, which was established in 1989 to exploit software for molecular design developed by Richards; and MediSense, which grew out of inorganic chemistry professor H. Allen O. Hill's work on glucose sensors. In 1989, MediSense launched a handheld device for diabetics. The company was sold to Abbott Laboratories in 1996. All three companies have gone public. These three companies are among 23 spinoff companies that have originated from research at the university. Since 1997, the university has created 16 spin-off companies, all of which have received investment funding. Richards points out that two more spin-off companies from the chemistry department are also on their way to becoming public companies. These are Oxford Biosensors, which was launched in August this year and emerged from work by Hill and colleagues on biosensors, and Opsys, a company that develops materials for the next generation of information displays and draws on research by inorganic chemistry lecturer Victor Christou's group at Oxford. "We've probably been more successful than any other U.K. university deDECEMBER11,2000 C&EN 4 5
science/technology partment in any discipline at creating which has origins in the salt trade in me- ic Chemistry Laboratory was possibly spin-out companies," Richards says. dieval London. Its first license was the worst space in a British university Beeson Gregory will work with Isis In- granted by King Richard II in 1394. In chemistry department. "There are relatively few fume cupnovation, the university's technology- 1918, the company set up the Salters' Intransfer company, in overseeing the stitute of Industrial Chemistry, the flag- boards [hoods], and most of the chemidentification and facilitation of more ship of the company's current activities. istry has to be done on open benches," spin-off companies from the chemistry The institute was formed to help young Green explains. 'The laboratories have department. Isis Innovation currently chemists complete their training after parquet floors, which is elegant in a has 300 ongoing projects andfilesone World War I and now helps young peo- way, but chemicals can [permeate] the ple to pursue careers in British chemi- cracks in the wood. The laboratories patent a week. The bank will also create a subsidiary, cal industries. It also encourages scien- have low ceilings and poor-quality fittings, and the roof of the building hasn't Beeson Gregory University Investments, tific literacy among young people. "The university also put in $3 million stopped leaking in various places since to develop its relationship with the chemistry department. Chris Wright, an Ox- up front and underwrote the rest of the I've been here. We've spent something ford University chemistry graduate and a cost so that construction of the building like $3 million on this building just upformer director of the U.K. Atomic Ener- could start in September," Richards says. grading the electrical wiring and heatgy Authority, has been appointed chief The new chemistry building will ing in the pastfiveyears." executive of the subsidiary. bring together under one roof related Yet even so, the department has been "The Beeson Gregory team has a research work that is currently spread one of the leading and largest departments of inorganic chemistry in proven track record in developthe world over the past 100 years, ing spin-out technology compaaccording to Green. The departnies," Richards says. 'With Chris ment has been particularly strong Wright overseeing this venture in solid-state chemistry, organoand working closely with Isis, we metallic chemistry, crystallograsee the university enjoying signifphy, and bioinorganic chemistry, icant upside from this powerful notes Green, whose own research combination." focuses on novel approaches to orHalf of the funding for the new ganometallic chemistry. William laboratory is being provided by Hume-Rothery, who founded the Britain's Joint Infrastructure sciences of metallurgy and materiFund OIF), a multi-million-dollar als science, and Dorothy Hodgkin, partnership between the Wellwinner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in come Trust, the British governChemistry who determined the ment's Office of Science and structures of vitamin B-12 and penTechnology, and the Higher Eduicillin, both worked in the Inorgancation Funding Council for Richards (left) and Christian at the groundbreaking. ic Chemistry Laboratory. England. 'Today, the laboratory is also wellover five buildings. The Oxford chemisThe Wellcome Trust is the world's largest medical research charity. Its try department has three subdepart- known for the work of Bob Williams, mission is to foster and promote re- ments separately housed in the Inorgan- who founded biological inorganic chemsearch with the aim of improving hu- ic Chemistry Laboratory, the Dyson istry," Green says. "Practical developman and animal health. With an asset Perrins Laboratory, and the Physical & ments include the glucose sensor by base of around $19 billion and an annual Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory. An- Allen Hill and several new devices withexpenditure of about $900 million, the other building, the New Chemistry Lab- in materials science. trust provides support for biomedical re- oratory, is the base for the cross"The department has the great adsearch, including chemistry, through disciplinary Oxford Centre for Molecu- vantage that it has consistently generatBritish universities and also in the de- lar Sciences, and a fifth building is ed new research lines in interdisciplidevoted to chemical crystallography. veloping world. nary areas, and it always attracts large According to Richards, these labora- numbers of talented young people," he JIF was set up to transform the scientific research environment within Brit- tories are not only old, they are also ob- concludes. "Undoubtedly, they deserve ish universities. The $50 million grant to solete. The Inorganic Chemistry Labo- much better facilities." Research in organic chemistry is carOxford for building the chemistry labo- ratory building, for example, consists of ratory is the largest grant to date made three parts, the first of which was built ried out in the Dyson Perrins Laboratoin about 1860. The second part was add- ry, which, like the Inorganic Chemistry by the fund. The remaining $20 million of the ed in 1905, and the last in the mid-1950s Laboratory, is old but notable for its past and present achievements. The departfunding for the building is being provid- using a pre-World War II design. "Since I arrived in the chemistry de- ment is headed by Sir Jack E. Baldwin, ed from a variety of sources including the British chemical company Thomas partment in 1963, there have been two whose research interests include the inSwan & Co. Ltd.; the Wolfson Founda- major reviews of the department by out- vestigation of penicillin biosynthesis tion—a British charity that provides side bodies, one in 1986 and the other in and the biomimetic synthesis of natural grants for science and technology, re- 1996," says Malcolm L. H. Green, pro- products such as sponge alkaloids. search, education, health, and the arts; fessor of inorganic chemistry. "Both re"The Dyson Perrins Laboratory has and the London-based Salters Co., ports said that the space in the Inorgan- an illustrious history dating back 80 46
DECEMBER 11,2000 C&EN
years/' observes John M. Brown, a senior member of the organic chemistry department. "It has become the flagship laboratory of U.K. organic chemistry." Brown points out that past achievements in the laboratory include the first total synthesis of cholesterol in the early 1950s by organic chemistry professor Sir Robert Robinson and coworkers. In 1947, Robinson won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his investigations on plant products of biological importance, especially the alkaloids. One of Robinson's team in Oxford who worked on cholesterol was Sir John W. Cornforth. Cornforth won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1975 when he was at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England, for his work on the stereochemistry of enzyme-catalyzed reactions. "Diversity is the key to present activities, which range from state-of-the-art studies on enzyme mechanisms through chemical catalysis and asymmetric synthesis to 21st-century materials," Brown tells C&EN. "Organic synthesis is the unifying force, and research in the laboratory is fueled by world-class facilities in NMR and mass spectrometry." The Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratories at Oxford were united under one roof in 1993-94 to create, according to a chemistry department brochure, the largest and most productive university research laboratory in the U.K In October, Jacob Klein, previously professor of polymer physics at the Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel, was appointed head of physical chemistry at Oxford. Klein's current research interests include molecular-level studies of transport, wetting, surface interactions, and nanotribology. His predecessors in the post include Frederick Soddy, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for his contributions to the chemistry of radioactive substances and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes, and Sir Cyril N. Hinshelwood, who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1956 for research into mechanisms of chemical reactions. Currently, the head of theoretical chemistry at Oxford is Mark S. Child, whose research focuses on the development of new theories for the dynamics of complex, intramolecular processes. "When the new laboratory is built, the chemistry department will retain the existing Physical & Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, the New Chemistry Laboratory, and up to half of the Inor-
ganic Chemistry Laboratory," Richards says. "So, there will be a major net gain in space for the department. The Dyson Perrins Laboratory and the crystallography laboratory will be given back to the university for other uses." The laboratory will have five stories, including a basement for state-of-the-art instrumentation and laboratories with controlled environments. "New techniques, such as atomic force microscopy, which are used for the study of interfaces and materials, require controlled conditions and laboratories that are very stable mechanically," Richards explains. "The basement will be ideal for this purpose." The building will house more than 400 researchers. The chemistry department currently has 72 faculty including 10 Fellows of the Royal Society, which is the British equivalent of members of the U.S. National Academies. At present, the department has 50 active research groups with 150 postdoctoral researchers working on topics ranging from structural biology through mainstream chemistry to materials science.
With 180 chemistry students graduating annually, it is the biggest chemistry department in the Western world, Richards claims. The university awards around 80 doctorates in chemistry each year, more than any other discipline at the university. The department's current annual research income is in excess of $15 million, and its researchers publish more than 500 research papers each year. In the British government's last research assessment exercise in 1996, Oxford was one of only two U.K university chemistry departments to receive a fivestar rating. The other was Cambridge University's chemistry department. "These assessment exercises are carried out on a five-year cycle," Richards explains. "All university departments in all subjects are graded on a scale of one to five, with five being the top. Afive-starrating is exceptional." "Chemistry is Oxford's strongest science," Richards concludes. "With the new laboratory, the department is set to become not only larger, but even stronger."^
BASF Sodium Methylate 30% Solution.
Na-O-CHa
Direct from our new storage tank! From our new storage tank, strategically located in Texas City, Texas, we provide prompt, timely delivery of BASF Sodium Methlyate in a 30% solution. Meanwhile, we continue to offer BASF Sodium Methylate in 25% solution. BASF: Meeting all your Sodium Methylate needs! Call 1-800-526-1072 Ext. 4575. Fax 1-973-426-4566. E-mail
[email protected] Making Products Better.
BASF DECEMBER 11,2000 C&EN 4 7
