Bioplatform Grant Renewal: Next Generation Biophotonics

光令人震惊：我们对光及其应用的理解有了极大的发展，特别是在近五十年前激光发明之后。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。这个领域可以被称为生物光子学，包括光与生物标本的所有相互作用。该补助金的目的是利用圣安德鲁斯队在这一领域的重大国际公认的成功。我们以前的平台赠款使我们能够在这一主题领域建立新的研究领域，并已达到国际地位。这包括利用生物材料的光的靶向递送（光致发光）、拉曼（获取细胞的光学指纹用于诊断细胞异常）和光动力疗法（使用光用于癌症治疗）等领域。我们的新赠款的目的是维持和加强我们的活动，确保我们有凝聚力的工作实践，以及在单分子，细胞生物学和临床应用领域的关键可行性研究。重点是走向真实的世界的应用，并与圣安德鲁斯新医学院的出现并行，以及生物光子学的几个当前和即将到来的任命。与此同时，我们非常希望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，并通过访问和泵启动研究促进新项目来获得国际知名度。因此，大部分资金将用于支付青年人进行可行性研究的工资。新补助金的成功将通过这些人的职业发展，新的响应模式赠款的生成，并通过期刊和会议论文与圣安德鲁斯学校之间的联合作者之间的传播，并酌情与国际同事。

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.