MultiUSer equipment for high-throughput, high-content analysis in Industrial and Cellular biotechnology (MUSIC)

Many of the projects in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology involve a requirement for the sophisticated, detailed, and above all RAPID analysis of biological cell samples. An instrument called the Intellicyt iQue Screener PLUS permits this, and the aim of this proposal is to secure such an instrument for an extensive User Community in Manchester and elsewhere. The instrument is unique (multiple patents) and no such instrument is available within 200 miles of Manchester.

Many of the projects in the Manchester Institute of Biotechnology involve a requirement for the sophisticated, detailed, and above all RAPID analysis of biological cell samples. The Intellicyt iQue Screener PLUS permits this, and the aim of this proposal is to secure such an instrument for an extensive User Community in Manchester and elsewhere. The instrument is unique (multiple patents) and no such instrument is available within 200 miles of Manchester.

WHO WILL BENEFIT: Companies will benefit in a number of ways, by (i) gaining access to knowledge of methods used for the rapid analysis of cells using modern, high-throughput flow cytometry, and e.g. (ii) knowledge of how to improve tolerance to various compounds, whether they are substrates, intermediary metabolites, nutraceuticals, drugs, or bioactives in any kind of products. So far as industrial biotechnology more generally is concerned, companies will benefit from knowledge of a novel strategy for rapid cell analysis.

HOW WILL THEY BENEFIT: As is our practice, all pertinent data are made available via the Web, and OA publishing has long been our norm. We also hold frequent workshops in Manchester to assist dissemination of research results. We have pioneered in the Altmetrics field for digital dissemination - indeed a recent Nature article (Kwok R: Altmetrics make their mark. Nature 2013; 500:491-492) highlighted the fact that the PI's paper Hull D, Pettifer SR, Kell DB: Defrosting the digital library: bibliographic tools for the next generation web. PLoS Comput Biol 2008; 4:e1000204 was the most accessed in ANY PLoS journal, with over 53,000 accesses! (it is past 95,000 now) - the PI's paper Kell DB: Iron behaving badly: inappropriate iron chelation as a major contributor to the aetiology of vascular and other progressive inflammatory and degenerative diseases. BMC Med Genom 2009; 2:2 has over 85,000 accesses, increasing at ~50 per day).We shall work closely with University KT staff and industrial IP offices (UMIP in Manchester) to secure intellectual property rights for any useful inventions that we discover. Having secured IP, future development work can take place, and several routes to commercialisation can be explored. For example, all pharmaceutical companies have their own relevant groups, with whom we are in contact. Finally, having secured IP, we shall, of course, seek actively to communicate our scientific findings to the wider research community through scientific meetings, scholarly publications and press releases.

THE WIDER COMMUNITY: DBK is also a well known blogger and tweeter, and social media will provide a novel and useful means of disseminating our findings.

COMMUNICATIONS: We will communicate with relevant industrial partners both directly and via the meetings of relevant learned societies (we are members of several). In year three of the Project, we will organise a half-day meeting to explain our research to interested industrial scientists. However, we will also provide a video link to facilitate the participation of those who are unable to travel to Manchester.