EPSRC-NIHR HTC Partnership Award 'Plus': UNIFY Plus

This proposal is focussed on addressing major unmet clinical needs in the repair and rehabilitation of non-union fractures. A non-union is a broken bone that fails to heal. These result from both civilian and military injuries and lead to pain, suffering and loss of dignity. The initial UNIFY network working with the Trauma Health Technology Cooperative has identified that more fundamental understanding is required of bone formation to address non-union and other closely related disease states. UNIFY Plus builds on UNIFY to permit work to better structure the field and feasibility studies of promising approaches to address the issues.

UNIFY Plus will continue to expand the thirteen University partner and ten clinical user network initiated by UNIFY. It will use the UNIFY campaign plan way of working to focus on core user led science and engineering problems within pathological ossification with the potential to deliver to clinician and patient needs. We will continue to focus on growing our international, industry and patient linkages. Addressing the specific and challenging demands of defence medicine with the strong support of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, and recognising the importance of defence medicine as an innovator and early adopter provides a significant route to impact.

The outputs of the network in addition to those of UNIFY will be:
- An additional year of UNIFY/UNIFY network continuity bridging the EPSRC and clinical and other communities with a focus on resolving issues of non-union fracture and pathological ossification,
- Deeper understanding of pathological ossification and how it can be addressed by the results of four competitively awarded £62.5K feasibility studies with translational intent and where viable a focus on securing collaborators and funding to permit ultimate implementation,
- The results of foundational studies to shape the national landscape for research in heterotopic ossification and assist researcher access to data on an from material banked at the University of Birmingham, and to understand the approaches required to engineer meaningful models of complex and contaminated non-unions,
- Events promoting discussion and debate on the fundamentals of ossification and of surgical approaches to addressing non-union recognising the requirement to integrate the clinical, mechano-biological and the materials community;
- Researchers with increased translational emphasis and enhanced skills in translation and knowledge of the translational funding landscape.