Foresight Fellowship in Manufacturing: "High-throughput functionalization of biomaterials for personalized healthcare"

“先进和功能材料”和“生物技术”都被确定为英国未来制造业活动的普遍技术。该奖学金将通过开发化学和生物技术来结合这两个领域，创造先进的功能化生物材料，利用研究员在化学/生物界面的跨学科专业知识。与用于医疗保健和个人护理的生物材料制造商合作，将生产能够治疗和诊断的混合生物材料。人口老龄化需要更便宜、性能更好的生物医学材料，但创造这些材料需要强大的生物材料功能化的化学和生物技术过程。提出了用于纳米结构生物材料改性的高通量模块化方法，使制造商能够为不同市场创造量身定制的高质量产品，这种方法能够快速响应客户（例如患者）的需求。这些方法将利用英国在生物技术方面的优势，实现成本降低和性能提高的阶段性变化；即使是NHS成本的小幅降低，也会给英国带来巨大的好处。该奖学金将通过三个关键主题领域的工作来解决这一问题：(1)开发简单、廉价和易于获取的方法，将反应性纳米颗粒添加到生物材料中；(2)利用合成生物学和生物技术使生物材料功能化；(3)利用合成化学生产增值生物材料。每个主题领域都被确定为一个令人兴奋的、高度跨学科的领域，已经成熟，可以进行开发，但不同领域的专家之间缺乏沟通阻碍了进展。例如，工业生物技术专家、合成化学家和超分子化学家对生物材料制造的参与不足，尽管在专业知识和该领域对英国制造业的重要性方面有明显的协同作用。该奖学金将在生物材料学者和生物材料制造商之间建立网络，并通过会议、研究人员交流和后续资助建立伙伴关系。该研究员将通过与欧洲、美国和澳大利亚/新西兰的领先国际研究人员互动，激发创新的合作研究方法，这些研究人员与申请人的专业知识互补。申请人将与领先的英国制造商和国际学术研究人员进行接触，包括通过个人会议，帮助组织行业学术会议和发展新的资助合作。在该奖学金结束时，将开发新的易于使用的化学和生化方法，这些方法将适用于学术和非学术生物材料研究，为英国制造业带来新的机会。

Both "Advanced and Functional Materials" and "Biotechnology" have been identified as pervasive technologies for future manufacturing activities in the UK. This Fellowship will join these two areas by developing chemical and biological technologies to create advanced functionalized biomaterials, taking advantage of the Fellow's cross-disciplinary expertise at the chemistry/biology interface. Working with manufacturers of biomaterials for healthcare and personal care, hybrid biomaterials will be produced that are able to heal and diagnose.An aging population needs cheaper biomedical materials with improved performance, but robust chemical and biotechnological processes for biomaterial functionalization are needed to create these materials. High-throughput modular methodologies are proposed for the modification of nanostructured biomaterials that will allow manufacturers to create tailored high-quality products for different markets, methodology that is able to respond quickly to the needs of customers (e.g. patients). These methodologies will draw on the UK's strengths in biotechnology to achieve a step change in cost reduction and an increase in performance; even a small reduction in costs to the NHS would bring significant benefits to the UK.The Fellowship will address this problem through work in three key theme areas: (1) developing simple, cheap and easy-to-access methodologies for adding reactive nanoparticles to biomaterials; (2) using synthetic biology and biotechnology to functionalise biomaterials; (3) using synthetic chemistry to produce value-added biomaterials. Each theme area has been identified as an exciting and highly interdisciplinary field that is ripe for exploitation, but where poor communication between experts in different fields is hampering progress. For example, there is insufficient involvement of industrial biotechnologists, synthetic chemists and supramolecular chemists in biomaterials manufacture despite clear synergies in expertise and the importance of this area to UK manufacturing.This Fellowship will build networks between biomaterials academics and biomaterials manufacturers, with partnerships backed up through meetings, researcher exchanges and follow-on funding. The Fellow will stimulate new innovative approaches to collaborative research by interacting with leading international researchers in Europe, the US and Australia/New Zealand who have complementary expertise to that of the applicant. The applicant will engage with leading UK manufacturers and international academic researchers, both through personal meetings and by helping to organise industry-academia meetings and developing new funded collaborations.At the end of this Fellowship, new easy-to-use chemical and biochemical methodologies will have been developed that will have applicability across academic and non-academic biomaterials research, producing new opportunities for UK manufacturing.