Centre for Protein Engineering was established in 1990 as one of the MRC's first interdisciplinary research centres and one of the first research laboratories to bring together molecular biology, molecular genetics, biophysics and structural biology into one cohesive unit.
For example, Cambridge Antibody Technology was a biotechnology company founded by Sir Greg Winter in 1989 that was bought for £702 million in 2006 by AstraZeneca.
Another successful project that was started at CPE and maintained there until 2010 was the Structural Classification of Proteins database (or SCOP).
The MRC Centre for Protein Engineering closed its doors at the end of September 2010, following the retirement of its director, Sir Alan Fersht.
Nearly all of the CPE staff, including those maintaining the Structural Classification of Proteins database, and its infrastructure were incorporated into the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).