The Global Hub in Medical Technologies and NanoHealth at Swansea University

With its Centre for NanoHealth, Swansea University leads Europe in NanoHealth and Medical Technologies, underpinned by existing and emergent international collaborations.

Swansea University's Centre for NanoHealth (CNH) is a £30M investment, state of the art facility conducting research and development in medical technology and nanotechnology for healthcare. The scope and breadth of the facility is unique in Europe allowing the design, fabrication, characterization, scale up in a cleanroom, embedded in a Category 2 biological environment; CNH covers translation through a clinical research unit. CNH opened in 2009 and has been the catalyst for interdisciplinary projects spanning Engineering, Medicine, Science and hospitals, internationally and nationally.

Much international collaboration has been forged through CNH's activity, particularly with leading international institutions in Medical Technologies and NanoHealth. The majority of CNH projects have direct clinical support through the University Hospital, which is co-located on campus and shares facilities. The current portfolio of externally funded projects supports over 25 RA/PDRFs and 40 PhD researchers with the involvement of circa 40 academics and clinicians, all having access to over £20M of state of the art equipment. Successful inward (interdisciplinary) and outward-reaching collaboration by CNH has attracted in excess of £16M from EPSRC, EU, MRC, TSB, the Royal Society, and industrial partners, who have a strong foothold in CNH as partners or spin-out companies.

This Global Hub will go beyond the limitations of standard operational practice: time constraints, single ad hoc staff exchanges, access to facilities and budget availability tend to stifle outputs and frustrate academic vitality and pace. The Hub will lead to increased productivity from existing international links with the US and rapidly build on the early stage collaboration with France and China. The objective is to create a high-profile Global Hub centered at Swansea University.

The Global Hub's programme of collaborative activity in Medical Technologies and NanoHealth focuses on four primary research clusters to intensify capacity and capability: Technology Development, Safety Assessment, Therapeutics, and Human Factors Engineering.

The EPSRC Global Hub in Medical Technologies and NanoHealth will facilitate a series of research exchanges that will enhance existing collaborations and develop new joint ventures. The objective is to develop new technologies and expand our understanding on the health and environmental safety of nanomaterials used as diagnostics or therapies, combined with their safe and effective clinical use. These are issues of national importance, whether considered from health, social or economic perspectives. Swansea University's Global Hub will have significant impact internationally, creating a powerful heritage of high quality work into the future for our key partners in the US, China and France. The Global Hub will draw in many participants, obviously from Swansea University, but also from different countries and at different career stages. We therefore have a variety of pathways to impact, ensuring that each of the participants succeed in different ways. The pathways lead to tangible outputs of note from research projects, as well as international collaborative research itself. These include:
>We will run workshops, in China, France and the US.
>Publish joint papers at international conferences, such as ICR, International Fibrinogen Workshop, International Congress of Biorheology, Conference on Clinical Haemorheology, ACM CHI, EICS, MRS, and so on.
>"Normal" workshops, as part of refereed conferences will be organized, e.g., in the Environmental Mutagen Society conference, which is in Swansea in 2012. Other conferences we will target include the International Conference on Nanotoxicology, Beijing, and MRS Boston, etc.
>The co-sponsorship of some of activities with the EPSRC BTG grant will extend the impact of the Global Hub into other disciplines, and in turn, allow social and other critiques to enhance the quality and breadth of our technical research.
>Some workshops will include public engagement events (e.g., a lecture in Science Café format, a programme currently sponsored by the College of Science at Swansea). We will use interactive media to maximise public engagement with the research.
>Swansea has an unusually high proportion of ECRs, who will be especially impacted by this Global Hub, producing a much-needed supply of creative researchers capable of, and empowered and enthusiastic about, international collaboration.
>The Global Hub activities have significant impacts related to the translation of basic research into economic and societal value, some mature examples are: Translation to clinic, Reduced use of animals in research and Point of care diagnostics.
>Swansea allows IP to be explored in new ways, and CNH has developed an IP assets management awareness plan, including open innovation. Our engagement with leading international groups, involving excellent clinical researchers and access to their facilities (especially in the US) will be a significant game-changer to the development of robust IPR and to establishing pathways to regulatory approvals for rapid exploitation
>Swansea University is in an EU-Convergence region, which allows us to apply for ERDF and ESF funds; the former are specifically targeted at developing research linkages with businesses and companies in Wales.