̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Innovate UK

AI is as good as pathologists at diagnosing coeliac disease, study finds

cjb250 — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 13:00:03 +0000

A machine learning algorithm developed by Cambridge scientists was able to correctly identify in 97 cases out of 100 whether or not an individual had coeliac disease based on their biopsy, new research has shown.

Cement recycling method could help solve one of the world’s biggest climate challenges

sc604 — Wed, 22 May 2024 14:47:38 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have developed a method to produce very low-emission concrete at scale – an innovation that could be transformative for the transition to net zero.

New vaccine technology could protect from future viruses and variants

sc604 — Mon, 25 Sep 2023 15:10:32 +0000

̽��ֱ��vaccine antigen technology, developed by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and spin-out DIOSynVax in early 2020, provided protection against all known variants of SARS-CoV-2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – as well as other major coronaviruses, including those that caused the first SARS epidemic in 2002.

̽��ֱ��studies in mice, rabbits and guinea pigs – an important step before beginning human clinical trials, currently underway in Southampton and Cambridge – found that the vaccine candidate provided a strong immune response against a range of coronaviruses by targeting the parts of the virus that are required for replication. ̽��ֱ��vaccine candidate is based on a single digitally designed and immune-optimised antigen.

Even though the vaccine was designed before the emergence of the Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2, it provided a strong protection against all of these and against more recent variants, suggesting that vaccines based on DIOSynVax antigens may also protect against future SARS-CoV-2 variants.

DIOSynVax (Digitally Immune Optimised Synthetic Vaccines) uses a combination of computational biology, protein structure, immune optimisation, and synthetic biology to maximise and widen the spectrum of protection that vaccines can provide against global threats including existing and future virus outbreaks. Its vaccine candidates can be deployed in a variety of vaccine delivery and manufacturing platforms. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Since the SARS outbreak in 2002, coronavirus ‘spillovers’ from animals to humans have been a threat to public health, and require vaccines that provide broad-based protection. “In nature, there are lots of these viruses just waiting for an accident to happen,” said Professor Jonathan Heeney from Cambridge’s Department of Veterinary Medicine, who led the research. “We wanted to come up with a vaccine that wouldn’t only protect against SARS-CoV-2, but all its relatives.”

All currently available vaccines, such as the seasonal flu vaccine and existing Covid-19 vaccines, are based on virus strains or variants that arose at some point in the past. “However, viruses are mutating and changing all the time,” said Heeney. “Current vaccines are based on a specific isolate or variant that occurred in the past, it’s possible that a new variant will have arisen by the time we get to the point that the vaccine is manufactured, tested and can be used by people.”

Heeney’s team has been developing a new approach to coronavirus vaccines, by targeting their ‘Achilles heel’. Instead of targeting just the spike proteins on the virus that change to evade our immune system, the Cambridge vaccine targets the critical regions of the virus that it needs to complete its virus life cycle. ̽��ֱ��team identifies these regions through computer simulations and selecting conserved structurally engineered antigens. “This approach allows us to have a vaccine with a broad effect that viruses will have trouble getting around,” said Heeney.

Using this approach, the team identified a unique antigen structure that gave a broad-based immune responses against different Sarbeco coronaviruses, the large group of SARS and SARS-CoV-2 related viruses that occur in nature. ̽��ֱ��optimised antigen is compatible with all vaccine delivery systems: the team administered it as a DNA immunogen (in collaboration with the ̽��ֱ�� of Regensburg), a weakened version of a virus (Modified Vaccinia Ankara, supported by ProBiogen), and as an mRNA vaccine (in collaboration with Ethris). In all cases, the optimised antigen generated a strong immune response in mice, rabbits and guinea pigs against a range of coronaviruses. Based on a strong safety profile, the "first-in-human" clinical trials are ongoing at Southampton and Cambridge NIHR Clinical Research Facilities. ̽��ֱ��last booster immunisations will conclude by the end of September.

“Unlike current vaccines that use wild-type viruses or parts of viruses that have caused trouble in the past, this technology combines lessons learned from nature’s mistakes and aims to protect us from the future,” said Heeney. “These optimised synthetic antigens generate broad immune responses, targeted to the key sites of the virus that can’t change easily. It opens the door for vaccines against viruses that we don’t yet know about. This is an exceptionally different vaccine technology – it’s a real turning point.”

̽��ֱ��research was initially funded by the DHSC UK Vaccine Network programme and later in part by the Innovate UK DIOS-CoVax programme. ̽��ֱ��DIOSynVax pipeline includes vaccine candidates for influenza viruses, haemorrhagic fever viruses, and coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, the latter of which is currently in clinical trials.

DIOSynVax is a spin-out company from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, established in 2017 with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm. Jonathan Heeney is the Professor of Comparative Pathology at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and a Fellow at Darwin College.

Reference:
Sneha Vishwanath et al. ‘A computationally designed antigen eliciting broad humoral responses against SARS-CoV-2 and related sarbecoviruses.’ Nature Biomedical Engineering (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41551-023-01094-2

Studies of a ‘future-proof’ vaccine candidate have shown that just one antigen can be modified to provide a broadly protective immune response in animals. ̽��ֱ��studies suggest that a single vaccine with combinations of these antigens – a substance that causes the immune system to produce antibodies against it – could protect against an even greater range of current and future coronaviruses.

This is an exceptionally different vaccine technology – it’s a real turning point

Jonathan Heeney

Uma Shankar sharma via Getty Images

Virus mutation

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Cambridge-developed SARS-CoV-2 vaccine receives £1.9million from UK government for clinical trial

cjb250 — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 23:01:09 +0000

Innovate UK, the UK government’s innovation agency, has provided the funding for a collaboration between Cambridge spin-out company DIOSynVax (which is contributing an additional £400,000 to the trial), the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and the ̽��ֱ�� Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust.

SARS-CoV-2 is a coronavirus, a class of virus named after their appearance: spherical objects, on the surface of which sit ‘spike’ proteins. ̽��ֱ��virus uses these spikes to attach to and invade cells in our body. One vaccine strategy is to block this attachment; however, not all immune responses against this virus and against this spike protein are protective – antibodies to the wrong part of the spike protein have been implicated in triggering hyper-inflammatory immune responses causing life-threatening COVID-19 disease. Added to this, SARS-CoV-2 is mutating and changes in the virus spike protein during the COVID-19 pandemic have already been observed to be widespread.

To develop their new vaccine candidate – DIOS-CoVax2 – the team use banks of genetic sequences of all known coronaviruses, including those from bats, the natural hosts of many relatives of human coronaviruses. ̽��ֱ��team have developed libraries of computer-generated antigen structures encoded by synthetic genes that can train the human immune system to target key regions of the virus and to produce beneficial anti-viral responses. These immune responses include neutralising antibodies, which block virus infection, and T-cells, which remove virus-infected cells. This ‘laser-specific’ computer generated approach is able to help avoid the adverse hyper-inflammatory immune responses that can be triggered by recognition of the wrong parts on the coronavirus’s surface.

Professor Jonathan Heeney, head of the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, and founder of DIOSynVax, said: “Our approach involves 3D computer modelling of the SARS-CoV-2 virus’s structure. It uses information on the virus itself as well as its relatives – SARS, MERS and other coronaviruses carried by animals that threaten to ‘spill-over’ to humans again to cause future human epidemics.

“We’re looking for cracks in its armour, crucial pieces of the virus that we can use to construct the vaccine to direct the immune response in the right direction. Ultimately we aim to make a vaccine that will not only protect from SARS-CoV-2, but also other related coronaviruses that may spill over from animals to humans.

“Our strategy includes targeting those domains of the virus’s structure that are absolutely critical for docking with a cell, while avoiding the parts that could make things worse. What we end up with is a mimic, a synthetic part of the virus minus those non-essential elements that could trigger a bad immune response.”

While most vaccines use RNA or adenoviruses to deliver their antigens, DIOSynVax’s is based around DNA. These synthetic gene inserts are very versatile and can also be placed within a number of different vaccine delivery systems that other companies are using. Once an antigen is identified, the key piece of genetic code that the virus uses to produce the essential parts of its structure is inserted into a DNA parcel known as a vector. ̽��ֱ��body’s immune cells take up the vector, decode the DIOS-vaccine antigen and use the information to program the rest of the immune system to produce antibodies against it.

This DNA vector has already been shown to be safe and to be effective at stimulating an immune response against other pathogens in multiple phase I and early phase II trials.

̽��ֱ��proposed vaccine can be freeze-dried as a powder and is therefore heat stable, meaning that it does not need to be cold-stored. This makes transport and storage much more straightforward – which is particularly important in low- and middle-income countries where the infrastructure to make this possible can be costly. ̽��ֱ��vaccine can be delivered pain-free without a needle into the skin, using the PharmaJet Tropis ® intradermal Needle-free Injection System, which delivers the vaccine in less than a 1/10th of a second by spring-powered jet injection.

Dr Rebecca Kinsley, Chief Operating Officer of DIOSynVax and a postdoctoral researcher at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, added: “Most research groups have used established approaches to vaccine development because of the urgent need to tackle the pandemic. We all hope the current clinical trials have a positive outcome, but even successful vaccines are likely to have their limitations – they may be unsuitable for vulnerable people, and we do not know how long their effects will last for, for example.

“Our approach – using synthetic DNA to deliver custom designed, immune selected vaccine antigens – is revolutionary and is ideal for complex viruses such as coronavirus. If successful, it will result in a vaccine that should be safe for widespread use and that can be manufactured and distributed at low cost.”

̽��ֱ��UKRI funding will allow the team to take the vaccine candidate to clinical trial, which will take place at the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Southampton Clinical Research Facility at the ̽��ֱ�� Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust and could begin as early as late autumn this year.

Professor Saul Faust, Director of the NIHR Southampton Clinical Research Facility, said: “It is critical that different vaccine technologies are tested as part of the UK and global response to the pandemic as at this stage no one can be sure which type of vaccine will produce the best and most long-lived immune responses.

“It is especially exciting that the clinical trial will test giving the vaccine through people’s skin using a device without any needles as together with stable DNA vaccine technology this could be a major breakthrough in being able to give a future vaccine to huge numbers of people across the world.”

Phil Packer, Innovation Lead for AMR and Vaccines at Innovate UK, said: “Innovate UK is excited to fund the development of DIOS-CoVax and its assessment in Phase I Clinical Trials. ̽��ֱ��rapid identification of the DIOS-CoVax2 vaccine was made possible because DIOSynVax were able to rapidly utilise its vaccine platform technology previously developed for an Ebola/ Marburg/Lassa fever vaccine.

“That was delivered by Innovate UK as part of DHSC’s Global Health Security Programme, which saw £110m invested in a new UK Vaccine Network charged with developing new vaccines and technologies to tackle diseases with epidemic potential.”

DIOSynVax is a spin-out company from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, set up in 2017 with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm.

How you can support Cambridge's COVID-19 research effort

Donate to support COVID-19 research at Cambridge

A Cambridge-developed vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2 could begin clinical trials in the UK in late autumn or early next year, thanks to a £1.9million award from the UK government.

Our approach – using synthetic DNA to deliver custom designed, immune selected vaccine antigens – is revolutionary and is ideal for complex viruses such as coronavirus. If successful, it will result in a vaccine that should be safe for widespread use and that can be manufactured and distributed at low cost

Rebecca Kinsley

geralt

Coronavirus

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Ebola and Lassa fever targeted by new vaccine trial and improved surveillance

cjb250 — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 09:08:41 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will shortly begin clinical trials of a new vaccine that builds on almost two decades of research to protect against diseases caused by RNA viruses. At the same time, they will begin studying the natural animal reservoirs of the viruses in an attempt to try and predict which strains are likely to cause future outbreaks, information that will be essential for creating effective vaccines.

Ebola, Lassa and Marburg viruses cause haemorrhagic fever, leading to severe disease, often with high mortality rates. Outbreaks can cause devastating local epidemics in the human population and to wildlife, including non-human primates. ̽��ֱ��recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa (2013–2016) killed over 11,000 people and devastated the infrastructure and economies of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

A new approach to vaccine development

Professor Jonathan Heeney and colleagues at the Laboratory of Viral Zoonotics, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have developed and successfully tested a trivalent vaccine in guinea pigs that protects against Ebola, Lassa and Marburg viruses. As a result, Professor Heeney has been awarded a further £2 million by Innovate UK and the Department of Health and Social Care to take the vaccine to clinical trials in humans.

̽��ֱ��research takes a new approach pioneered by Professor Heeney and builds on Cambridge’s strengths in genomics, monoclonal antibody research and computational biology. It has led to the formation of DIOSynVax, a spin-out company of Cambridge Enterprise.

A virus’s genetic code is written into its ribonucleic acid (RNA), just as ours is written into our DNA, which leads to the generation of proteins. When we are infected by a virus, our immune system responds to these proteins, known as ‘antigens’, producing antibodies that can identify and try to eliminate the invading pathogen.

̽��ֱ��approach developed by Professor Heeney involves understanding how the immune system correctly identifies the virus from its proteins, and using this information to create ‘viruses’ that can generate an immune response. Using monoclonal antibodies – copies of antibodies taken from survivors of the target diseases – they can then test whether the body can effectively eliminate these fake viruses, leading to protection.

“We’ve taken fundamental science that stretches back almost two decades and developed a new approach to vaccine development,” says Professor Heeney. “This has the potential to dramatically reduce the time needed to produce new vaccines and change the way in which the industry makes them.”

With the new funding, the team hopes to scale up production while ensuring that the quality of the vaccine is maintained. They will then carry out toxicity tests in animals and human blood samples to test for potential adverse effects; if successful, they will then trial the vaccine in healthy human volunteers.

̽��ֱ��funding is part of a £5m commitment from the Department of Health and Social Care to fund five projects to develop new vaccines with a ‘One Health’ focus, considering how the environment, the health of animals and the health of humans interact. This sits within the government’s £120m UK aid commitment to develop vaccines to help tackle diseases with epidemic potential.

Predicting the next outbreak

In recent Ebola outbreaks, the approach used successfully by the World Health Organization is known as ‘ring vaccination’, focused on vaccinating and monitoring a ring of people around each infected individual. However, this approach can only be used in response to an outbreak. In order for a vaccine to be used proactively – to prevent an outbreak in the first place – it is necessary to predict which strain or strains of a virus are most likely to cause future epidemics.

“A disproportionally high number of emerging and re-emerging diseases – from Ebola and Lassa through to rabies and influenza – are caused by RNA viruses carried naturally by animals,” says Professor Heeney. “We know very little about the viral diversity within these reservoir species and what enables them to spread to humans – and hence where the likely future threats lie.”

Viral genomes are notoriously variable due to the high mutation rates that occur during replication. These accumulate over time and result in evolution of the viruses as they circulate in their natural animal reservoir populations. If some viral variants arise and are able to adapt to use human cell receptors and are then able to escape immune defences, they may become highly infectious and cause large disease outbreaks.

“Vaccines are only as good as the antigen immune targets of the virus that they are designed for,” adds Professor Heeney. “If the antigen changes, the vaccine will no longer be effective. In most cases, current vaccine candidates against RNA viruses are from past human outbreaks with little or no information of future risks from viral variants carried in animal reservoirs, especially those with the potential for animal-to-human transmission.”

Professor Heeney has also received £1.4 million from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to lead a project that aims to predict where future outbreaks may arise from and the likely strains, and to then use this knowledge to inform vaccine design. This One Health project enlists veterinarians, clinicians, ecologists and medical and public health workers in West Africa to understand how people catch Lassa fever from rat populations. Their work will include trapping rat species that carry these viruses and placing GPS tags to monitor their movements, as well as obtaining molecular, genomic and antibody data from the animals and viral sequences from infected rats.

Professor Melanie Welham, Executive Chair of BBSRC, says: “This important research from the team at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is about providing effective treatments for some potentially deadly diseases spread by rats and bats: Lassa and Ebola respectively. Novel strategies to combat dangerous infections like these are essential and often underpin the development of much-needed next generation vaccines.

“Professor Heeney and team have already made a significant difference in this area, researching cross species transmissions of these viruses, with a view to developing vaccines for Ebola and Lassa that would be effective against multiple strains.”

In addition, the team is collaborating with Professor James Wood, Head of the Department of Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge, who is conducting a complementary study funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund to sample bat colonies in Ghana, believed to be a natural reservoir for the Ebola virus.

“Equipped with this information, we should be able to design better vaccine antigens for more effective and broadly-protective vaccines,” says Professor Heeney. “Combined with our accelerated vaccine development platform, this has the potential to have an enormous positive impact on global public health.”

Scientists hope that a new approach to vaccine development, combined with improved surveillance of potential future threats of outbreak, could help to massively reduce the impact of deadly diseases such as Ebola, Marburg and Lassa fever.

"This has the potential to have an enormous positive impact on global public health"

Jonathan Heeney

NIAID

Ebola Vaccine Study in West Africa

Yes

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Maggots and rotting food waste: a new recipe for sustainable fish and animal feed

cjb250 — Tue, 31 Jul 2018 07:00:03 +0000

̽��ֱ��company behind this idea is Entomics Biosystems. It was set up in 2015 by a group of students from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, with support from the Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship Centre’s ‘Accelerate Cambridge’ programme.

“It’s one of those stories where we came together in a pub over a pint, talking about weird ideas,” explains its CEO and co-founder Matt McLaren. “ ̽��ֱ��team has members from the Department of Biochemistry, from Engineering, from the [Judge] Business School, so it really is a diverse skill set.”

According to the company, each year over 1.3 billion tonnes of food are wasted globally – equating to around US$1 trillion of lost value. With an increasing population and modern lifestyles, the burden of food waste on society and the environment is set to increase in the future.

Entomics focuses on ‘insect biomass conversion’. Larvae of the black soldier fly chew their way through several tonnes of food waste collected from local supermarkets and food processing plants. ̽��ֱ��insects are fed different ‘recipes’ under controlled conditions to see how these affect growth rates and nutritional profiles. They metabolise the food waste into fats and proteins, growing to around 5,000 times their body weight within just a couple of weeks.

As McLaren, explains, these fats and proteins “are great sources of nutrition for salmon and poultry – in fact, insects are part of their natural diet”. Entomics is currently working with partners including the ̽��ֱ�� of Stirling, who are world-leading salmon aquaculture experts, to validate and test their products in the field.

“Farmed salmon in Scotland are currently fed on fishmeal which comes from wild-caught anchovies from as far away as Chile and Peru, which are then shipped across the world to Scotland,” he explains. “Insects provide a nice, sustainable solution.”

With support including from Innovate UK and the European Institute of Technology (via EIT FoodKIC), Entomics is using a novel bioprocessing technique to boost the nutritional and functional benefits of these insect-derived feeds, using a microbial fermentation technology they have termed ‘Metamorphosis’. Essentially, these specialised feeds represent a sustainable, holistic approach to improving overall fish health and welfare.

“There are several benefits to this process,” explains Miha Pipan, Chief Scientific Officer and fellow co-founder, “from affecting the gut’s microbiome and trying to preserve a healthier bacterial community there, to training immune systems to make livestock more resistant to disease challenges and at the same time reduce the need for veterinary medicines, antibiotics and vaccines.”

“ ̽��ֱ��world’s looking for more sustainable sources of feed and I think increasingly there’s a recognition that it’s not just about basic nutrition, but it’s about overall health,” says McLaren. “We’re trying to take a promising, sustainable ingredient of the future – these insect-derived feeds – and trying to add a bit of biotechnology or science focus to it, to really enhance what the effect is in the end application and reduce reliance on traditional antibiotics and veterinary medicines.”

There is endless potential for innovation in the emerging insect industry in general, and the Entomics team is also working on an engineering project to build a smart, modular system for insect production in the future. This includes developing computer vision algorithms to understand and monitor insect behaviour during the production process – for example, the insects’ growth and health.

McLaren is grateful of the support that the company received from the Cambridge Judge Business School to get itself off the ground. “ ̽��ֱ��mentorship and coaching provided by the Accelerate Cambridge programme in particular has been vital to getting our business to its current stage, and the credibility of the Cambridge brand has allowed us to engage with some great academic and commercial partners.”

In a warehouse to the northeast of Cambridge are shelves upon shelves of trays teeming with maggots, munching their way through a meal of rotting fruit and vegetables. This may sound stomach-churning, but these insects could become the sustainable food of the future – at least for fish and animals – helping reduce the reliance on resource intensive proteins such as fishmeal and soy, while also mitigating the use of antibiotics in the food chain, one of the causes of the increase in drug-resistant bacteria.

Farmed salmon in Scotland are currently fed on fishmeal which comes from wild-caught anchovies from as far away as Chile and Peru, which are then shipped across the world to Scotland. Insects provide a nice, sustainable solution

Matt McLaren

Maggots and rotting food waste: a new recipe for sustainable fish and animal feed

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Black soldier fly larvae

Yes

Test can identify patients in intensive care at greatest risk of life-threatening infections

cjb250 — Wed, 13 Jun 2018 09:37:58 +0000

Infections in intensive care units (ICU) tend to be caused by organisms, such as multi-resistant gram-negative bacteria found in the gut, that are resistant to frontline antibiotics. Treating such infections means relying on broad spectrum antibiotics, which run the risk of breeding further drug-resistance, or antibiotics that have toxic side-effects.

Estimates of the proportion of patients in ICU who will develop a secondary infection range from one in three to one in two; around a half of these will be pneumonia. However, some people are more susceptible than others to such infections – evidence suggests that the key may lie in malfunction of the immune system.

In a study published in the journal Intensive Care Medicine, a team of researchers working across four sites in Edinburgh, Sunderland and London, has identified markers on three immune cells that correlate with an increased risk of secondary infection. ̽��ֱ��team was led by researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Edinburgh and biotech company BD Bioscience.

“These markers help us create a ‘risk profile’ for an individual,” explains Dr Andrew Conway Morris from the Department of Medicine at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “This tells us who is at greatest risk of developing a secondary infection.

“In the long term, this will help us target therapies at those most at risk, but it will be immediately useful in helping identify individuals to take part in clinical trials of new treatments.”

Clinical trials for interventions to prevent secondary infections have met with mixed success, in part because it has been difficult to identify and recruit those patients who are most susceptible, say the researchers. Using this new test should help fine tune the selection of clinical trial participants and improve the trials’ chances of success.

̽��ֱ��markers identified are found on the surface of key immune cells: neutrophils (frontline immune cells that attack invading pathogens), T-cells (part of our adaptive immune system that seek and destroy previously-encountered pathogens), and monocytes (a type of white blood cell).

̽��ֱ��researchers tested the correlation of the presence of these markers with susceptibility to a number of bacterial and fungal infections. An individual who tests positive for all three markers would be at two to three times greater risk of secondary infection compared with someone who tests negative for the markers.

̽��ֱ��markers do not indicate which secondary infection an individual might get, but rather that they are more susceptible in general.

“As intensive care specialists, our priority is to prevent patients developing secondary infections and, if they do, to ensure they get the best treatment,” says Professor Tim Walsh from the ̽��ֱ�� of Edinburgh, senior author on the study.

̽��ֱ��Immune Failure in Critical Therapy (INFECT) Study examined data from 138 individuals in ICUs and replicated findings from a pilot study in 2013.

A key part of enabling this study was to standardise how the research could be carried out across multiple sites, say the researchers. They used an imaging technique known as flow cytometry, which involves labelling components of the cells with fluorescent markers and then shining a laser on them such that they give off light at different wavelengths. This has previously been difficult to standardise, but the researchers successfully developed a protocol for use, ensuring they could recruit patients from the four study sites.

̽��ֱ��study was funded by Innovate UK, BD Bioscience and the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia.

Reference
Conway Morris, A et al. Cell surface signatures of immune dysfunction risk stratify critically ill patients: INFECT Study. Intensive Care Medicine; June 2018; DOI: 10.1007/s00134-018-5247-0

Patients in intensive care units are at significant risk of potentially life-threatening secondary infections, including from antibiotic-resistant bacteria such as MRSA and C. difficile. Now, a new test could identify those at greatest risk – and speed up the development of new therapies to help at-risk patients.

In the long term, this will help us target therapies at those most at risk, but it will be immediately useful in helping identify individuals to take part in clinical trials of new treatments

Andrew Conway Morris

MilitaryHealth

Intensive Care Unit

Researcher Profile: Dr Andrew Conway Morris

Dr Andrew Conway Morris is an intensive care specialist at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, part of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals. It was the hospital’s location on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus that attracted him back to the city where he had been born and raised.

“I moved to Cambridge in order to take advantage of the fantastic opportunities to work with some of the world’s leading scientists, as well as develop collaborations with the growing biotech and pharmaceutical cluster centred around Addenbrooke’s Hospital,” he says.

Conway Morris undertook his undergraduate medical education in Glasgow before moving to Edinburgh to train in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. His PhD in Edinburgh was on dysfunction of immune cells known as neutrophils in critically ill patients and looking at the development of new diagnostic tests for secondary pneumonia.

He is now a Wellcome-funded Senior Research Associate in the John Farman Intensive Care Unit at Addenbrooke’s, where he is trying to find new ways to prevent and treat infections in hospitalised and critically-ill patients.

“I carry out my work using a combination of human cell models and animal models of pneumonia and aim to develop new therapies for infection that do not rely on antibiotics,” he says. “I also have a clinical project evaluating a new molecular diagnostic test for pneumonia, which aims to deliver more rapid and accurate tests for infection.”

Outside of work, it is his children that keep him occupied. “I have two boys who occupy most of my free time - both are football-mad - and I help run a local youth football team,” he adds.

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Funding boost for infrastructure research at Cambridge

sc604 — Mon, 30 Nov 2015 02:00:29 +0000

Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to support the UK’s infrastructure and cities has received further backing in the form of two major funding initiatives. ̽��ֱ��Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction (CSIC) has secured a further five years of funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Innovate UK; while the UK Collaboratorium for Research in Infrastructure and Cities (UKCRIC), of which Cambridge is a partner, has secured £138 million of funding, to be match funded from other sources, as part of last week’s spending review.

̽��ֱ��additional funding to CSIC will allow it to build on its significant achievements over the past five years to become a widely-recognised hub for the infrastructure and construction industry, bringing together leading academics and industrialists, developing a faster route for innovation adoption, providing an ecosystem for building confidence in new innovations and enabling their timely implementation and exploitation.

“CSIC will continue to engage with business leaders and decision makers in key markets to ensure that our work continues to meet industry needs, and that industry leaders are well informed of the value that ‘smart’ innovations in infrastructure and construction can bring to their business,” said Jennifer Schooling, Director of CSIC. “CSIC’s ability to deliver value is unrivalled. Our outputs present real opportunities to make major improvements in how we create new infrastructure.”

There has already been substantial impact of CSIC’s activities in terms of the wide variety of tools and technologies - including fibre optic strain measurement, UtterBerry ultra-low power wireless sensor motes, vibration energy harvesting devices and CSattAR photogrammetric monitoring system - recently deployed on some of the largest civil engineering projects including Crossrail, National Grid, London Underground, CERN and the Staffordshire Alliance.

̽��ֱ��application of CSIC’s capability and knowledge is now being broadened to new markets including water infrastructure, highways and power.

“Securing this funding for the next five years offers a wide range of opportunities to take CSIC’s work forward and embed a culture of innovation adoption in the infrastructure and construction industries,” said Schooling. “CSIC cannot achieve this alone – working with industry is the key to our success to date and we always welcome approaches from industry partners seeking to collaborate.”

Professor Philip Nelson, CEO, EPSRC, said: “ ̽��ֱ��Centre will continue its leading role within the UK by increasing the lifetime of ageing infrastructure, making it more resilient, and making construction processes more efficient by using smart sensing technology. This collaborative research between academia and industry will increase the UK’s competitiveness, lead to savings quantified in millions of pounds and provide technology that can be exported for UK based companies.”

Kevin Baughan, Director of Technology and Innovation at Innovate UK said: “ ̽��ֱ��work of CSIC has helped to demonstrate the value of smart infrastructure to the construction industry, and this is reflected in the recognition of innovation at the heart of the future plans of the construction leadership council. By extending funding for a further five years, we underline our support for their commitment to raise the commercialisation bar even higher. This will help companies of all sizes grow through leveraging the excellent UK science base in smart infrastructure.”

UKCRIC is a collaboration of 14 UK universities which aims to provide a knowledge base to ensure the long-term functioning of the UK’s transport systems, energy systems, clean water supplies, waste management, flood defences and the development of SMART infrastructures.

Outside national security and medicine, UKCRIC will be one of the largest collaborative research projects in the UK. Current national and international partners include: Bristol City Council, Network Rail, Mott MacDonald, Buro Happold, Atkins, National Grid, DfT, EDF and Thames Water, with many more partners to follow. In order to tap further into the UK’s expertise and creativity UKCRIC’s founding core of 14 universities will be expanded over the coming years.

Cambridge will receive funding through UKCRIC which will be used to support research in the application of advanced sensor technologies to the monitoring of the UK’s existing and future infrastructure, in order to protect and maintain it.

UKCRIC programmes will integrate research on infrastructure needs, utilisation and performance through experiments, analysis, living labs and modelling. This will provide a new combination of decision support tools to inform infrastructure operators, planners, financiers, regulators, cities, and government on the optimisation of infrastructure capacity, performance and investment.

Two new funding initiatives at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will support the UK’s infrastructure and cities.

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̽��ֱ��skyline of London viewed along the Thames from Waterloo Bridge in London, England.

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