Imperial College London Flexible Talent Mobility Account

Lead Research Organisation: Imperial College London
Department Name: Research Office

Abstract

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Description The award's aim is to support the mobility of talented early career bioscience researchers and industrialists in a way that is in alignment with the Industrial Strategy. This has been achieved by funding Innovation Fellowships (inward secondments of industrialists or ECRs working with an industry partner) and Innovation Placements (outward secondments of recently submitted PhD students). Four Placements and three Fellowships have been funded from the award. All Fellowships were relevant to the Rutherford Fund (supporting researchers from outside the UK to live and work here for the duration of their secondment).

Secondments have provided career development opportunities for those ECRs involved, including new employment contracts at Imperial for two inward secondees and an outward secondee.

New and existing industrial collaborations have been supported through the Flexible Talent Mobility Account, including with SMEs (Manchester BIOGEL and Modern Synthesis Ltd). The collaboration with Manchester BIOGEL led to submission of a successful application for a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) to support the stay of a postdoc within the Imperial team at the industry partner to expand commercialisation routes of novel extracellular matrices that mimic cell environments.
Exploitation Route Collaboration with industry partners is continuing. A successful KTP application with Manchester BIOGEL provides a strengthened partnership that will see the SME expand commercialisation of its technology with the input of Imperial. An inward secondment working with Astrazeneca has demonstrated the diagnostic potential of a novel technology that allows for the rapid and reliable identification of materials originating from cancerous cells; as a result additional interest from other external partners, including venture capitalists, has been forthcoming in commercialising the technology. The collaboration with Modern Synthesis, and in particular the demonstrated potential for production of "self-dyeing materials", were major factors in helping this SME close a seed round of $4.2M at the end of 2021. The SME has sponsored a PhD student at Imperial to continue the research.

Additionally, an inward secondment has supported ODA aims, training a secondee from India in low-cost, modular, sustainable, open source "openScopes" microscopes that will provide new imaging capabilities that may ultimately be used for clinical histopathology, e.g. for diagnosis of kidney disease. The aim is for this to be deployed at the Dr. B. Borooah Cancer Institute, Guwahati.

Additional funding has been secured to support further development of work undertaken as part of one of the Fellowships. The secondment piloted the use of ultra-high resolution FT-ICR-MS to human exposome studies that can help to understand the links between environmental exposure and child health. As a result of the successful exposome pilot, the FTMA Fellow is now developing the use of this platform in a Horizon 2020 project that is part of the European Exposome Network, ATHLETE, and plans applications for personal fellowship funding. Further funding has also been achieved to extend the activity of a Placement that demonstrated the potential for production of "self-dyeing materials". The "home" research group at Imperial has now secured a 4 million euro 5-year EIC grant to work with groups in Finland and Netherlands to extend the research of engineered materials related to those in this project. The FTMA partner (Modern Synthesis) are part of the 'user-group' of companies that will be interacting with this project.
Sectors Healthcare
 
Description H2020: Advancing Tools for Human Early Lifecourse Exposome Research and Translation (ATHLETE)
Amount € 12,000,000 (EUR)
Funding ID 874583 
Organisation European Commission H2020 
Sector Public
Country Belgium
Start 01/2020 
End 12/2024
 
Description KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP : Self-assembling peptide matrices as a platform for cell biology studies
Amount £131,608 (GBP)
Funding ID connected to KTP 12102 
Organisation Manchester BIOGEL 
Sector Private
Country United Kingdom
Start 06/2020 
End 01/2023
 
Description KNOWLEDGE TRANSFER PARTNERSHIP : Self-assembling peptide matrices as a platform for cell biology studies
Amount £152,119 (GBP)
Funding ID KTP 12102 
Organisation Innovate UK 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 06/2020 
End 01/2023
 
Description Cairn Research Ltd 
Organisation CAIRN Research Ltd
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution We have developed a range of microscopy techniques aimed to widen access to advanced microscopy, including for scientists from LMIC and other lower resourced settings. We have published the openFrame concept, CAD files and component lists under open -source licences. Cairn have implemented these ideas into their product development and will be able to provide the benefit of low-cost but advanced microscopy techniques to the community. These include research-grade fluorescence microscopes based on our modular openFrame concept, optical projection tomography and an optical autofocus system.
Collaborator Contribution Cairn have advised on components and practical implementations of various aspects of our instruments and have provided us with prototypes at significant discounts that have been customised to our requirements. We have advised them on key research issues for microscopy and designed open source optical instrumentation for which they are now making components available on a commercial basis to the wider user community who wish to access the technology but cannot or do not wish to fabricate it themselves. This instrumentation is intended to work with open source software, including our open source software. Cairn will now provide our openFrame microscope that can be used to implement almost any other microscope modality at relatively low cost and with potential to upgrade. openFrame is our original concept and the design has been refined with input from Cairn. We are currently co-designing a new microscope incubator compatible with openFrame microscopes and HCA ancillary instrumentation.
Impact The instrumentation development is essentially optical physics but the applications are multidisciplinary - mainly biomedical
Start Year 2015
 
Description Collaboration with AstraZeneca - SPARTA 
Organisation AstraZeneca
Department Research and Development AstraZeneca
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution Development of a single nanoparticle Raman-based characterisation technique (SPARTA)
Collaborator Contribution Collaboration to develop commercial applications of SPARTA for disease diagnostics
Impact n/a
Start Year 2019
 
Description Collaboration with Manchester BIOGEL 
Organisation Manchester BIOGEL
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Private 
PI Contribution An Innovation Placement was awarded to Jose Ernesto Cortez Lopez, (Department of Bioengineering, submitted PhD in 2019) to undertake a three-month placement at Manchester BIOGEL, a new SME industry partner for Imperial. Manchester BIOGEL benefitted from Jose's expertise in cell mechanology and associated protocols, which will widen the research fields in which their products can be used, and retained a position within the company as a result of the placement.
Collaborator Contribution Manchester BIOGEL had produced novel matrices that recapitulate cell environment, simultaneously tuning rigidity and pH/charge, a unique resource. Jose was able to adopt these new matrices to adapt the mechanobiology platform developed during his PhD, incorporating the ability to tune chemical properties, something not available through the matrices used during his doctoral studies.
Impact Successful funding application: Knowledge Transfer Partnership
Start Year 2019
 
Title METHODS AND COMPOSITIONS 
Description The present invention relates to biomaterials, in particular bacterial cellulose and provides means to prepare pigmented cellulose, and in particular relates to means of preparing spatially restricted pigmented cellulose. The invention provides 5 corresponding methods and components. 
IP Reference WO2023285800 
Protection Patent / Patent application
Year Protection Granted 2023
Licensed Commercial In Confidence
Impact Collaborating company looking to license the invention as part of the set up of their new London-based manufacturing labs
 
Title openFrame-based microscopes 
Description openFrame is an open-source modular microscope platform that can be fabricated by users and which can be adapted/upgraded for almost any imaging modality, making it sustainable. 
Type Of Technology New/Improved Technique/Technology 
Year Produced 2023 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact We have used the openFrame microscope to develop the M3M microscope and quantitative phase imaging within this project. Outside the Accelerator, we have applied it to super-resolved microscopy with Indian Institute of Technology and are working to translate it to the University of Cape Town in South Africa. 
URL https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/openFrame
 
Description Crick Curiosity Space 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Local
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact We participated in the "Curiosity Space" event held at the Francis Crick Institute to provide an introductory microscopy session to local school children and their families in the Kings Cross area. Attendees collected samples from the Crick Story Garden, were taught techniques on how to prepare the samples for imaging and given the opportunity to view their samples using light microscopes.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023