A partnership to help tackle the growing challenges of infections and inflammation of the lungs has been allocated a £27.6 million funding boost.
A partnership to help tackle the growing challenges of infections and inflammation of the lungs has been allocated a £27.6 million funding boost.
Lung conditions are a leading cause of illness and death globally, but finding new ways to treat them is both slow and costly. The process looks set to become both faster and cheaper, however, thanks to the new partnership project announced today. The initiative will use optical fibres developed at the University of Bath to discover new treatments for serious lung conditions.
The six-year collaboration will receive funding totalling £27.6 million, of which £11 million will come from the government via the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and £16.6 million from partner funders.
Lung infections (which include pneumonia, bronchitis and tuberculosis) and inflammatory conditions affect millions of people globally each year. They can result from bacterial, viral, and fungal infections, as well as environmental pollutants and chronic diseases like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The impact on public health is profound, leading to significant morbidity and mortality rates.
The new project - called Microtex - will seek to develop new technologies to identify both existing and new medicines that can treat lung conditions. The work unites engineering with robotics, AI chemistry, physics, biology and clinical medicine.
Microdosing
The team will deposit tiny amounts of candidate drugs to microscopically small parts of patients’ lungs using a technique called Intra Target Microdosing (ITM). This technique will allow scientists to quickly and efficiently reject poor candidate drugs and highlight promising drugs at an early stage of development.
The project will implement ITM using a range of technologies. One will involve optical fibres designed at Bath. These flexible fibres will be able to access parts of the lungs that are unreachable with existing tools.
Microtex will also develop ways to take precise tissue samples from patients’ lungs before and after treatment to test the effectiveness of the drugs that are delivered.
Professor Tim Birks from the Department of Physics and the Centre for Photonics and Photonic Materials at Bath will be leading the Bath side of the project. Dr James Stone from the Department of Physics will also be involved in this work.
Explaining how the optical fibres are expected to work, Professor Birks said: "In our labs, we design and make advanced optical fibres that are specifically intended for medical use. We have found a way to turn silica glass tubes into flexible fibre that can reach parts of the lungs existing tools cannot.
"The new project builds on this experience to develop fibres that meet the particular challenges of microdosing, including new ways to precisely deliver and extract tiny quantities of tissue and fluids in hard-to-reach locations in the body. It’s an exciting opportunity to work with a broad team of expert scientists, engineers, patients and clinicians to transform the development of new medicines."
Researchers expect microdosing to limit the need for animal research, by allowing new drugs to be tested more safely for the first time in humans.
Five tech projects to improve global health
Microtex is one of five revolutionary healthcare tech projects that are being launched today with total funding of £118 million, which includes £54 million from the UKRI Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
MicroTex is being led by the University of Edinburgh and will be based in the Baillie Gifford Pandemic Science Hub in the Institute of Regeneration and Repair. Other partners include Heriot-Watt University, LifeArc Rare Respiratory Diseases Centre, Baillie Gifford, patient groups, international and industrial collaborators.
Professor Ian Underwood, of the Institute of Integrated Micro and Nano Systems in the University of Edinburgh’s School of Engineering, said: "By innovating at the microscale, the Edinburgh-led MicroTex hub is set to transform the fight against drug-resistant diseases, harnessing the power of advanced technology to accelerate the development of life-saving treatments. By bringing together experts across medicine, science and engineering, we will collaborate to develop solutions which will help safeguard the future of global health."
Professor Kev Dhaliwal, of the Baillie Gifford Pandemic Science Hub, Institute for Regeneration and Repair, Edinburgh BioQuarter, said: "In a post-Covid world, the urgency to outpace infectious and inflammatory diseases and be prepared for the next pandemic, has never been greater. The MicroTex hub will deliver a critical leap forward in this race. The hub brings together a highly diverse team of researchers and a wide range of partners to innovate, collaborate and transform drug development with microdosing."
EPSRC Executive Chair Professor Charlotte Deane said: "The five new hubs bring together a wealth of expertise from across academia, industry and charities to improve population health, transform disease prediction and diagnosis, and accelerate the development of new interventions.
"They represent an exciting range of adventurous techniques and approaches that have great potential to improving the lives of millions of people here in the UK and across the world."
