EPSRC IRC Proteus - Multiplexed 'Touch and Tell' Optical Molecular Sensing and Imaging - Lifetime and Beyond

EPSRC IRC Proteus由一群世界领先的科学家、工程师和临床医生组成。跨学科是我们的核心-我们跨越传统的界限，将光学物理学，化学生物学，生物学和工程学等学科联系在一起。我们的目标和愿望是将技术转化为帮助患者的技术，使临床医生能够在床边“看到疾病”，帮助他们做出正确的决定，并在正确的时间给予正确的治疗。这种由临床需求和拉力驱动的高度跨学科合作，导致了许多世界领先的床边技术平台的设计，制造和患者测试。我们的技术平台结合了先进的光纤技术（可以很容易地进入患者的肺部）和高灵敏度的检测器，以及高灵敏度的荧光化学试剂来诊断疾病。这使得临床医生能够“查看”肺部内部，以检测疾病的细菌或异常疾病特征。临床拉动：重症监护病房（ICU）患者的死亡率和残疾率很高，对医疗服务造成了不成比例的经济负担（相当于美国GDP的1%用于重症监护患者）。潜在致命的肺部并发症是ICU通气患者的常见问题，在ICU中照顾这些患者的医生面临许多挑战，通常需要在没有适当通知这些决定所需的信息的情况下做出快速决定。Proteus正在开发的新技术平台正在帮助重症监护室的医生对患者进行快速准确的诊断，使他们能够指导和通知治疗，并确保患者在正确的时间和快速获得正确的治疗。虽然我们的技术平台目前专注于在重症监护室中使用，但它广泛适用于各种肺部疾病和其他医疗保健情况，例如肠癌或胰腺癌。IRC的下一步是将我们的技术带入一个新的领域，在这个领域中，不同的光可以用来诊断疾病--使用团队高度先进的光传感器（能够计算单个光子）。此外，该提案将IRC推向可持续发展，创造了EPSRC投资的遗产-加速了将新技术引入患者的途径，总而言之，EPSRC IRC Proteus培养了一批新的年轻跨学科科学家，他们在物理和生物科学以及工程方面受过培训，对临床转化和商业化有充分的认识和实践经验。途径。他们将能够应对将科学和工程的进步转化为医疗保健福利的挑战，开发一些尖端的床边技术平台，帮助医生做出快速准确的诊断。该团队与合作大学一起，也开始朝着IRC的全面可持续性迈出重大步伐-在临床和商业翻译领域产生重大影响，并开展了重要的学术产出和公众参与活动。

The EPSRC IRC Proteus is made up of a group of world-leading scientists, engineers and clinicians. Interdisciplinarity is at our heart - we work across traditional boundaries linking together disciplines such as optical physics, chemical biology, biology and engineering to name but a few. The ambition and desire is to translate technologies to help patients - empowering clinicians to "see disease" in front of their eyes at the bedside and help them to make the right decisions and give the right treatments at the right time. This highly interdisciplinary collaboration driven by clinical need and pull, has led to the design, fabrication and testing in patients of a number of world-leading bedside-based technology platforms. Our technology platform combines advanced fibre optic technology (that can be readily be passed into the lung of patients) and highly sensitive detectors in association with highly sensitive fluorescent chemical reagents to diagnose disease. This allows clinicians to "view" inside the lung to detect bacteria or aberrant disease signatures of disease. Clinical pull: Intensive care unit (ICU) patients suffer high death and disability rates and are responsible for a disproportionate financial burden on the health service (the equivalent of 1% of USA GDP is spent on patients in intensive care). Potentially fatal lung complications are a common problem in ventilated ICU patients and doctors caring for these patients in the ICU face many challenges, often needing to make snap decisions without the information necessary to properly inform those decisions. The new technology platforms being developed by Proteus are helping doctors in the intensive care unit to make rapid and accurate diagnoses of patients, allowing them to direct and inform therapy and ensure patients get the right treatment, at the right time and quickly. Although our technology platforms have a focus at this time on being used in the intensive care unit, it is widely applicable to a wide range of lung conditions and other healthcare situations, such as bowel or pancreatic cancer.The next steps for the IRC are to take our technology into a new area in which different flavours of light can be used to diagnose disease - using the teams' highly advanced light sensors (that are able to count a single photon). In addition the proposal moves the IRC towards sustainability, creating a legacy from the EPSRC investment - accelerating the pathways to take new technology into patients, while developing commercial opportunities.In summary the EPSRC IRC Proteus has generated a new cohort of young interdisciplinary scientists trained in physical and biological sciences and engineering that have a full appreciation and practical experience of clinical translational and commercialisation pathways. They will be able to meet the challenges of converting advances in science and engineering into healthcare benefits with the development of a number of cutting-edge bedside technology platforms which will help doctors make rapid and accurate diagnoses. The team, in association with the partner Universities, have also begun to make major strides towards full sustainability of the IRC - making major impacts in the areas of clinical and commercial translation, with significant academic outputs and public engagement activities.