SoRo for Health: Implantable soft robotics for restoration of physiological function

SORO for Health是一个独特的跨学科平台，将三个新的和快速发展的科学领域(软机器人、先进生物材料和生物印刷、再生医学)结合在一起，将为重大的未得到满足的健康问题提供变革性的技术解决方案。我们是一个协作的科学小组，包括来自世界上最令人兴奋和快速进步的三个技术领域的代表。软机器人是机器人学的一个新分支，它使用符合要求的材料来创造机器人，其移动方式与自然界中的机器人相似；这一新范式已经在改变从航空航天到制造业等各种领域。先进生物材料是探索应用新型和常规材料修复结构和功能的一个快速发展的领域。最近，随着3D和生物打印技术的进步，它得到了加强，取得了开创性的临床突破。再生医学使用一系列生物工具，如细胞、基因和生物材料，来取代和恢复患有一系列疾病的患者的功能。它探索了材料、细胞和组织之间的界面，并已被应用于再生关键器官和组织。在过去的几年里，我们的三个团队联合起来，开发了一系列原型解决方案，以满足未得到满足的健康需求，涉及的领域包括呼吸和吞咽、运动障碍和心血管疾病。在这里，我们寻求将我们的活动进一步整合到一个独特的EPSRC平台上，并有五个主要目标。首先，也是最重要的是，我们将支持、保留和发展三位充满活力的后起之秀(博士后研究助理，PDRA)的职业生涯，否则他们可能会从这个领域失去。除了主要支持他们的职业发展外，我们还将确保提供一批具有交叉科学技能和领导力培训的优秀个人，他们能够为这一新兴但令人难以置信的令人兴奋的健康软机器人(SORO)领域提供领导和指导。这将通过科学进步和商业伙伴关系使这些科学家、该领域和英国受益。其次，我们将通过灵活的内置资金流，支持我们的PDRA探索与我们的合并领域相关的新的高风险假设。这将有助于它们的发展，但也会产生新的想法和技术，以推动进一步的科学探索，并在适当的情况下促进临床；否则，这些想法可能会被资金搁置。第三，我们将扩大和发展一个充满活力的国际网络，进一步支持我们的STAR的发展，并在国际上激发整个领域的活力，其枢纽设在英国。第四，我们将与来自医疗保健专业人员和患者/护理人员社区的最终用户接触。我们将使用专业的协调员和既定的定性技术来确定索罗在寻求解决人口健康和医疗保健方面的突出和迫在眉睫的问题时面临的关键挑战和机遇。最后，我们将与英国行业和生物技术企业领袖合作，开发一条有效、简化的知识产权保护、应用和商业化路线，使Soro for Health Technologies有可能获得最好的机会，广泛获得健康收益，并迅速应用于有需要的人。因此，Soro for Health平台结合了三个新领域的国际领先团体的人才，特别是新兴人才，他们的共同愿景是通过开发响应性、定制化的基于软机器人的植入物和设备来改变数百万人的生活，以应对21世纪一些尚未满足的重大健康挑战。

SoRo for Health is a unique interdisciplinary Platform uniting three new and rapidly advancing areas of science (soft robotics, advanced biomaterials and bioprinting, regenerative medicine) in a collaboration that will deliver transformative technological solutions to major unmet health problems. We are a collaborative scientific group including representatives from three of the most exciting and rapidly advancing technology areas in the world. Soft robotics is a new branch of robotics that uses compliant materials to create robots that move in ways mirroring those in nature; a new paradigm that is already transforming fields as diverse as aerospace and manufacturing. Advanced biomaterials is a rapidly progressing field exploring the application of novel and conventional materials to restoring structure and function. It has recently been augmented by advances in 3D- and Bio-printing with seminal clinical breakthroughs. Regenerative medicine uses a range of biological tools, such as cells, genes and biomaterials, to replace and restore function in patients with a range of disorders. It explores the interface between materials and cells and tissues and has been applied to regenerate critical organs and tissues. Our three groups have combined over the last few years to develop a range of prototype solutions to unmet health needs, in areas as diverse as breathing and swallowing, motor disorders and cardiovascular disease. Here we seek to further coalesce our activity in a unique EPSRC Platform with five primary goals. Firstly and most importantly, we will support, retain and develop the careers of three dynamic rising stars (postdoctoral research assistants, PDRAs) who might otherwise be lost from the field. Primarily supporting their career development, we will thereby also ensure the provision of a cadre of stellar individuals with cross-cutting scientific skills and leadership training who can provide leadership and direction to this nascent, but incredibly exciting, field of Soft Robotics (SoRo) for Health. This will benefit these scientists, the field, and the UK through scientific advance and commercial partnerships. Secondly, we will support our PDRAs to explore novel and high-risk hypotheses related to our combined fields through a flexible inbuilt funding stream. This will help their development, but also generate new ideas and technologies to take forward towards further scientific exploration and, where appropriate, clinic; ideas that might otherwise have fallen by the funding wayside. Thirdly, we will expand and develop a vibrant international network that will further support the development of our stars as well as energising the whole field internationally, with its hub here in the UK. Fourthly, we will engage with end-users, from both healthcare professional and patient/carer communities. We will use professional facilitators and established qualitative techniques to identify the key challenges and opportunities for SoRo as it seeks to address the outstanding and imminent issues in population health and healthcare. Finally, we will work with UK industry and biotech business leaders to develop an effective, streamlined route to IP protection, application and commercialisation that gives SoRo for Health technologies the best possible chance for widespread health gains and speedy application to those in need. Thus, the SoRo for Health Platform combines the talents, and specifically emergent talents, of internationally-leading groups in three new areas with the common Vision of transforming the lives of millions through the development of responsive, customised soft robotic-based implants and devices to address some of the major unmet health challenges of the 21st Century.