Dundee University's department of biochemistry, which recently held a topping out ceremony for its Pounds 12 million Wellcome Trust Building, has won a Pounds 4.5 million grant from the Medical Research Council for its protein phosphorylation unit. This will fund 16 staff and six PhD students in the next five years to boost research into a key mechanisms that control the body's response to insulin, growth factors and stress signals. At present, pharmaceutical firms are often unable to design effective drugs to heal disease because not enough is known about the underlying biochemical processes.