Developing research concepts

Two research groups from the University have been awarded Proof of Concept funding from Scottish Enterprise to enable their ideas to be developed further.

A project to develop an instrument that will enable throat biopsies to be taken without the need for general anaesthesia was awarded £165,900. Headed up by Professor of Biomedical Engineering Eric Abel and Paul White, Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Otolaryngology and Alan Slade, Lecturer in the Division of Mechanical Engineering & Mechatronics, the concept is to develop an instrument (named MITHRAS) that can be introduced readily through the nose and down the throat, in order to obtain a biopsy sample.  It would enable the procedure to be carried out in the outpatient clinic under local anaesthesia at the time of a patient’s initial appointment with the ENT consultant.

The clinical and commercial potential of the introduction of this instrument is great, and the availability of the technology would greatly reduce patient risk, trauma and discomfort.  With 60,000 routine biopsies carried out in the UK each year the savings to the NHS would be a key benefit. MITHRAS will provide an earlier diagnosis of pharangeal and laryngeal cancers with the opportunity for earlier intervention and treatment, thereby offering improving clinical outcomes.

The second award was for a project led by Professor William Hunter, Dr Stephanos Ghilagaber and Dr Rudi Marquez from the School of Life Sciences.

With healthcare workers increasingly finding that antibiotics are becoming useless, due to antibiotic resistance, the team are working on a project to develop novel antimicrobial drugs that could combat this challenge.

The development of these drugs could fight some of the world’s most serious diseases, including tuberculosis, upper respiratory tract infections, a range of sexually transmitted infections, toxoplasmosis, coccidiosis in poultry and malaria.

The team will use computer techniques to both analyse the structure of the target proteins in this pathway and to design novel inhibitors of these proteins.  The ultimate goal is to generate a small molecule inhibitor designed to reduce the development of drug resistance.