Transformative Imaging for Quantitative Biology (TIQBio) Partnership

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The Transformative Imaging for Quantitative Biology (TIQBio) partnership aims to develop disruptive technology for the benefit of UK Plc and for solving problems in industry and academia. The mainstay of current imaging methods to look at pre-clinical biological samples is fluorescence microscopy. This technique relies on the use of tags, which emit light when illuminated by the microscope, allowing the location of the structures or molecules to which they are attached to be determined. Insertion or attachment of a tag is an invasive process for any living system and can alter its behaviour and the way it functions. Furthermore, all living systems, tissue and cells are inherently 3-dimensional. Therefore to image in 3D one has to point-by-point collect fluorescence signal and reconstruct an image. This is a very slow and damaging process especially for 3-D live samples that represent real-life conditions. For discovering new drugs or for studying mechanisms in diseases or healing it is obvious that one should use conditions that are as near to real life as possible, before human testing. This is why most biomedical researchers and industrial sectors that operate in the area of diseases, drugs or therapeutics want to use life-like samples. At the moment however, the tools to image them in 3D and in an unperturbed, non-damaging manner simply do not exist. Furthermore, it is desirable to work at the highest resolution so we can see the smallest things that exist at the nanoscale in such biological systems and obtain holistic information about the chemical composition and structural order. This information will reveal unprecedented insight and hence help understand diseases or why a particular drug candidate does or does not work allowing better ones to be made. TIQBio will address these challenges so that unperturbed, live imaging can be carried out at an unprecedented resolution level in full 3D, with holistic information from multiple readouts carried out rapidly on 100s of test biological models. These innovative tools and technologies will allow the discovery of drugs to be improved, reduce costs for bringing a drug to market benefiting the pharma industry and patients alike. Patients with rare diseases or in lower income countries may gain access to new drugs because of the proposed disruptive technology. Biomedical researchers will benefit as they will be able to understand phenomena without misleading results due to tags; the use of real life-like models will better inform or protect the public through the development of therapies or defence countermeasures.