Flexible bio-degradable electronics for on-skin mouse ECG monitoring

Animal models (particularly mice) are widely used for pre-clinical testing and discovery biology. This PhD will focus on materials for non-invasive systems for mouse vital sign monitoring. This will i) provide an important advance for immediate pre-clinical cardiovascular research at UoM, ii) drive refinement of animal use in research (a major N3Rs commitment), and iii) provide a device that will be applicable to a wide range of pre-clinical test situations. Current work in CI Bechtold's lab focuses on time-of-day prevalence of potentially life threatening cardiac arrhythmias.

The work builds on a number of EPSRC funded projects investigating flexible printed electronics for on-skin use by humans. These operate as "temporary tattoos", similar to rub-on tattoos given to children, but now with electronics added. This work has been done in collaboration with the high value manufacturing catapult to investigate scale-up and the suitability of systems and processes for mass production.

In this PhD we will seek to build on this base and modify our current approaches to make them suitable for on-mouse use. The aim is to make a step change in the burden that sensing typically places on a mouse. Current heart and motion sensors are implanted, thus increasing stress to the animal and welfare burden. There is a significant desire from the research community for improving their design. To do this, on-skin devices have to be much smaller, necessitating small feature size printing. They also have to be easy to put on the mouse, necessitating investigating new substrates for flexibility/strechability.

There are numerous beneficiaries of this Advanced Biomedical Materials CDT. Firstly and of short term impact are the PhD students themselves. They will receive extensive research specific and professional/transferable skills training throughout the 4 years of the programme. They will have access to state of the art facilties and world leading academics, industry and clinicians. The training and potential placements are designed to maximise the impact of their research in terms of dissemination and movement of their research along the translation pathway.

Longer term benefits are that this distinct cohort will become the future UK Biomedical Materials leaders and be able to use their bespoke training and network within the cohort to collaborate on future worldwide funding opportunities and drive UK research in this area.

UK and international academics will benefit as they will gain the next generation of highly skilled postdoctoral researchers with knowledge and expertise not only in their specific research area but of industry, regulatory and clinical aspects.

UK and international industry will benefit - in the short term they will gain academic based research to further develop products and in the longer term have a pool of highly skilled graduates.

Clinicians will benefit from collaborative research and also the development of new and novel products to enhance the treatment of a variety of trauma and disease based needs from biomaterials.

The public will benefit as end users as patients that will have their quality of life improved from the products developed in the CDT and will be educated in novel technologies and materials to repair the human body. The UK economy will benefit from the reduced healthcare costs associated with the new and improved medical products developed in this CDT and subsequently from the trained graduates. The UK economy will also benefit from the increased revenue from medical sales products from the UK industrial partners we will be working with.

The impact of this CDT will be realised by direct academic, clinical and industrial engagement with the students allowing efficient and state of the at training and fast translation of developing products. Students will also be trained in knowledge exchange and will use these skills to disseminate their research to, and liaise with, the key stakeholders - the academic, industrial, clinical and public sectors. We will ensure widening participation routes are addressed in this CDT in order to include equality and diversity not only in our initial CDT student cohort but in future researcher generations to come.