R. Derek Finlay, a former student of the University of Cambridge and long-standing donor to Collegiate Cambridge, is donating £5 million to help fund the completion of the new Chemistry of Health building at the Department of Chemistry, and to support research into neurodegenerative diseases.
A plaque unveiled by Finlay dedicates the laboratories that will be occupied by the Centre for Misfolding Diseases to his late wife, Una Finlay, who died of Alzheimer’s in 2016. This plaque will be placed within the Chemistry of Health building when it opens in 2018.
The Centre’s research, which is directed by Christopher Dobson, Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology, is taking forward understanding of misfolding proteins in humans and looking at ways to accelerate the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics.
Professor Dobson said: “We are enormously grateful for this generous benefaction from Derek, and honoured that our laboratories within the building will be named after his late wife Una. Disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease are becoming frighteningly common in the modern world. The Chemistry of Health building will enable us to make a giant step forward in translating recent breakthroughs made in Cambridge into future treatments to combat these rapidly proliferating and truly devastating conditions.”
Read the full article on the University of Cambridge news pages.