Multidisciplinary Optical Imaging Team awarded £11.5M
June 2013: Congratulations to CIR investigators awarded £11.5M in “Multiplexed ‘Touch and Tell’ Optical Molecular Sensing and Imaging”
Congratulations to CIR investigators; Professor Mark Bradley, Dr Kev Dhaliwal, Professor Chris Haslett and Professor Tim Walsh who as part of a multidisciplinary team with Heriot-Watt University and the University of Bath, have been awarded £11.5M for an Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) in healthcare technologies entitled “Multiplexed ‘Touch and Tell’ Optical Molecular Sensing and Imaging”.
This was one of the three IRCs awarded in the UK from EPSRC. The IRC will bring together MRC CIR Clinician Scientists with world class physical scientists (physicists, chemists, signal processors, informaticians) and engineers along with regulatory experts and major industrial partners to design, make and test a ‘point-of-care’ optical technology that has the potential to revolutionise pulmonary medicine and the care of acutely sick patients.
Over the next five years the team will use advanced fibre optic technology, new chemistries, microelectronics and computer intelligence to develop a microscopic probe that can be passed into patients’ blood vessels and lungs that aims to change the way disease is diagnosed, assessed and monitored by providing real-time multiplexedin situmolecular pathology.
Along with measuring things such as oxygen, lactate and glucose in the patient’s blood and lungs, the device will detect bacteria, viruses, inflammation and other harmful processes that could damage the lung.
Whilst initially applicable to lung diseases in adult, paediatric and neonatal intensive care, the technology will also be applicable to a multitude of other pulmonary, gastrointestinal, renal and reproductive conditions.
The translational programme will begin in October 2013 with the IRC Optical ‘Hub’ comprised of senior scientists from engineering, chemistry, physics, informatics and biology co-located in the Centre for Inflammation Research to work alongside clinician scientists.