Bioplatform Grant Renewal: Next Generation Biophotonics

光是相当惊人的：我们对光及其应用的了解有了极大的增长，特别是在近50年前激光发明之后。现在，在现代生物医学应用和医疗保健中使用光正在取得重大进展。这一领域可称为生物光子学，涵盖了光与生物标本的所有相互作用。这笔赠款的目的是利用圣安德鲁斯团队在这一领域取得的国际公认的重大成功。我们之前的平台资助使我们能够在这个主题领域建立起已经达到国际地位的主要新的研究线索。这包括生物材料的光定向传递(光固化)、拉曼(获取细胞的光学指纹以诊断细胞异常)和光动力疗法(利用光治疗癌症)等领域。我们新拨款的目的是维持和加强我们的活动，以确保我们的工作实践具有凝聚力，并推动单分子、细胞生物学和临床应用领域的关键可行性研究。重点是走向现实世界的应用，并与圣安德鲁斯一所新的医学院的到来以及生物光子学的几个现有和即将到来的任命同步进行。同时，我们非常热衷于在这个令人兴奋的领域留住、发展和促进非常有前途的年轻PDRA的职业生涯，并通过访问和顶尖学习促进新项目的开展，从而获得国际知名度。因此，大部分资金将用于支付年轻人开展可行性研究的工资。新赠款的成功将通过这些人的职业发展、产生新的响应模式赠款以及通过圣安德鲁斯学校之间以及酌情与国际同行共同撰写的期刊和会议论文进行传播来衡量。

Light is quite astounding: our understanding of light and its applications has grown immensely, particularly following the invention of the laser nearly fifty years ago. Major strides are now being made to use light in modern biomedical applications and healthcare. This area may be termed Biophotonics and encompasses all interactions of light with biological specimens. The aim of this grant is to capitalise upon the major internationally recognised success of the St Andrews team in this area. Our previous Platform grant allowed us to establish major new strands of research in this topic area, that have reached international status. This includes the areas of targeted delivery with light of biological material (photoporation), Raman (taking an optical fingerprint of cells for diagnosis of cell abnormality) and photodynamic therapy (using light for cancer treatment) amongst others. The aim of our new grant is to sustain and enhance our activities that ensure our cohesive working practices, as well as pump-priming key feasibility studies in the areas of single molecules, cell biology and clinical applications. The emphasis is to move towards real world applications and runs in parallel with the advent of a new Medical School at St Andrews, as well as several current and upcoming appointments in Biophotonics. In tandem, we are very keen to retain, develop and promote the careers of very promising young PDRAs in this exciting field, as well as gain international visibility by fostering new projects through visits and pump-prime studies. Thus the large bulk of funding will cover salaries for young people to carry out the feasibility studies. The success of the new grant will be measured through the career progression of these people, the generation of new responsive mode grants, and dissemination through journal and conference papers with joint authorship between the Schools at St Andrews but also with international colleagues as appropriate.