Disruptive Semiconductor Technologies for Advanced Healthcare Systems

这个平台赠款的中心目标是支持我们对个性化医疗设备的研究愿景。这些设备将在许多疾病的诊断和管理方面产生革命性的变化，显著提高医疗保健的成本效益，并最终拯救生命。在过去的十年里，我们一直在将伦敦帝国理工学院的生物医学工程研究所(IBE)发展成为这一多学科研究计划的世界领先中心。在这里，我们将半导体技术中最好的电子工程技能与特定的感官接口结合在一起，创造出与临床医生密切合作开发和测试的新型医疗设备。这笔赠款将为我们现有的多学科团队提供必要的关键支持，以继续其工作，并在颠覆性半导体医疗技术领域保持强大的国际知名地位。成功开发和部署新的医疗保健技术有三个关键组成部分：(1)拥有关键技能和专业知识组合的优秀团队(在电子、材料、物理、化学、生物、医学方面)，(2)专业设备和工具(如用于设计电子芯片/芯片实验室的Cadence工具，用于与微芯片接口的仪器，用于测试这些设备的湿式实验室)，以及(3)与关键利益相关者的强大互动，包括临床/工业合作伙伴，如公共/私营医疗机构、中小企业(如Science fica、DNA Electronics)和跨国公司(如GSK、罗氏、英特尔)。我们团队已经开发并成功整合了所有这三个组件，以创造新的技术和设备，包括第一个完全可植入的人工耳蜗、无线生命体征监测系统、下一代DNA测序技术以及用于糖尿病的人工胰腺。Platform Grant将为早期研究提供支持，使我们能够探索几个我们有能力产生重大影响的新的战略研究方向。这些新的研究领域包括：使用离子敏感晶体管和呼气分析进行癌症诊断的两种新方法，用于细菌菌株鉴定的DNA技术，以及集成到半导体设备中的生物传感器。我们还计划引入两个全新的概念，用于无创大规模记录神经活动，这将有助于我们更好地了解人脑。构建可持续的未来是该团队的重要目标。平台赠款将有助于保持和进一步发展我们集团的独特能力。它将使我们能够留住一些关键研究人员及其专业知识(如CMOS和芯片实验室设计和测试、生物传感器等)，同时帮助他们发展自己的独立研究事业，形成下一代世界级科学家。最后，这个平台将使我们能够与世界领先的神经假体临床和技术专家一起，参与建立一个主要的全球“人-仿生界面”网络，并在适应、辅助和康复技术方面建立新的合作。我们的目标是，我们在这些新的战略方向的研究最终将提供新的研究设备和工具以及新的诊断和治疗技术。通过建立在硅微芯片的可靠性、可扩展性和处理能力的基础上，这些技术将实现大规模生产和高度便携。因此，我们希望在解决我们这一代人面临的一些最大挑战方面做出重要贡献：了解癌症以及如何控制它，如何应对日益耐药的新菌株，以及如何解决大脑疾病中日益严重的问题。

The central aim of this Platform Grant is to support our research vision of personalised healthcare devices. These devices will make transformative changes in the diagnostics and management of many diseases, significantly improve the cost effectiveness of healthcare and ultimately save lives. For the last ten years we have been developing the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBE) at Imperial College London as a world-leading center for this multidisciplinary research initiative. Here we combine the best electronics engineering skills in semiconductor technology with specific sensory interfaces to create new types of medical devices, developed and tested in close collaboration with clinicians. This grant will provide our existing multidisciplinary team with the critical support required to continue its work and sustain a strong, internationally renowned position in disruptive semiconductor healthcare technology. There are three key components to successful development and deployment of a new healthcare technology: (1) an excellent team with key combinations of skills and expertise (in electronics, materials, physics, chemistry, biology, medicine), (2) specialist equipment and tools (such as Cadence tools for designing electronic chips/lab on chips, instrumentation to interface with the microchips, wet labs to test these devices), and (3) strong interaction with key stakeholders including clinical/industrial partners, such as public/private health institutions, SMEs (e.g. Scientifica, DNA electronics) and multinationals (e.g. GSK, Roche, Intel). Our group has developed and successfully integrated all three components to create new technologies and devices, including the first totally implantable cochlear prosthesis, a wireless vital signs monitoring system, a next generation DNA sequencing technology, and an artificial pancreas for diabetes. The Platform Grant will provide support for early stage research, enabling us to explore several new strategic research directions in which we are capable of making a major impact. These new areas of investigation include: two novel approaches to cancer diagnostics using ion-sensitive transistors and breath analysis, DNA technology for bacterial strain identification, and biosensors integrated into semiconductor devices. We also plan to introduce two entirely new concepts for non-invasive large-scale recording of neural activity, which will help us to better understand the human brain.Building a sustainable future is an important goal for the group. The platform grant will be instrumental in maintaining and further developing our group's unique capability. It will allow us to retain some key researchers and their expertise (such as CMOS and lab-on-chip design and testing, biosensors, etc) while helping them to develop their independent research careers and form the next generation of world-class scientists. Finally, this platform will allow us to participate in establishing a major worldwide network on "Human-Bionic Interface" together with world leading clinical and technology experts in neuroprosthetics, as well as to establish new collaborations in adaptive, assistive and rehabilitative technologies.Our aim is that our research in these new strategic directions will ultimately provide new research devices and tools as well as new diagnostic and treatment technologies. By building on the reliability, scalability and processing power of silicon microchips, these technologies will be mass-producible and highly portable. Thus we expect to make important contributions in solving some of the greatest challenges of our generation: understanding cancer and how to control it, how to cope with new strains of increasingly antibiotic-resistant bacteria and how to tackle growing problems in the brain disorders.