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Professor Malcolm Young and colleagues at Newcastle University developed new mathematical and computational tools with which they could analyse large amounts of data on connections in the brain and produce models of how the brain is organised. Young realised that those research tools could also be used to analyse networks of proteins involved in disease processes and predict their susceptibility to drugs and in 2003 he set up the medicines discovery company e-Therapeutics to exploit the technology. The company listed on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange in November 2007 and in May 2013 became the eighth largest company in the biotechnology/pharmaceutical sector listed on the index, with a market capitalisation of over £90 million.
Epilepsy is one of the most common neurological diseases. It is characterised by apparently unpredictable seizures that severely affect the quality of patients' life. In this case study we demonstrate how our research has derived commercial impact within the medical technology industry, as well as impact on researchers and practitioners in neuroscience and medical science. Mathematical research carried out at the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at the University of Aberdeen has led to a threefold impact. First, our research shaped the development, implementation and validation of a new software platform, called EPILAB, containing a vast number of sophisticated algorithms targeting seizure prediction together with novel statistical tools to evaluate prediction performance. Second, our research resulted in commercial impact through the development of a new automatic long term monitoring device, called LTM-EU, by one of our industrial collaborators, Micromed (Italy). Third, a direct consequence of our research is the compilation and commercial exploitation of the world's largest epilepsy database of its type, which enables novel studies into seizure prediction in epilepsy.
Research by Professor Karl Friston at UCL has led to the development of Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM), a statistical framework and software package. By providing a way to analyse signals measured from the human brain in MRI scanners, SPM triggered the creation of an entirely new field of imaging neuroscience. Beneficiaries include: commercial manufacturers who provide imaging equipment; healthcare practitioners and patients, where SPM is used to deliver new treatments; pharmaceutical industries using SPM to deliver clinical trials; the IT industry developing new software based on SPM; and entirely new industries such as neuromarketing that could only have been created once SPM had been invented.
Researchers at Queen Mary have applied mathematical modelling techniques to understand how and when problems may arise in complex man-made infrastructure networks including electricity, gas, global shipping and haulage networks. Many of these networks have points of vulnerability where a local issue such as an earthquake, a terrorist attack or even a simple engineering problem can bring down widespread areas of the network. Our research and the associated modelling techniques have impacted on organisations including the UK Treasury Office and the European Commission's Joint Research Centres at both Petten and Ispra, where it has been used to inform UK and European policy guidelines and legislation for infrastructure projects.
This Impact Case Study illustrates the impact of our research on clinicians and medical researchers. Research conducted by the Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at the University of Aberdeen has developed software enabling clinical trials to be carried out in Germany aimed at creating new diagnostic tools for unborn children in order to identify foetal developmental issues. The research, focusing on time series analysis and dynamical systems, derived clinical benefits in that the Groenemeyer Institute, a privately-run research and treatment organisation, used it in the development of pioneering non-invasive methods for the diagnosis of foetal pathological conditions. The research also achieved considerable reach among the non-specialist public through media coverage in the UK and Germany.
Research by Higham, Estrada and Grindrod into new, computable measures for large, dynamically evolving communication networks has allowed the automatic identification of individuals who act as influencers, or efficient listeners. This research insight has been taken up by Bloom Agency (Leeds), a digital marketing and media agency. Bloom has used these ideas to strengthen their Data Insights Team, leading to investment in new jobs, generation of new business and delivery of better results for their clients. Bloom's commercially available real time social planning software product, Whisper, builds directly on the published research, and is at the heart of the agency's success in doubling staff numbers to 60 in recent months, having grown its annual income by 50% to £2.4Million through the use of these new tools.
Research of Tiziana Di Matteo on network-based filtering techniques has lead to powerful new tools for the characterization of dependencies in large complex data sets. This has generated impact on practitioners and professional services in the biotechnology industry and with financial regulators. The Swiss biotechnology firm THERAMetrics Holding AG has used Di Matteo's techniques for developing a quantitative methodology to validate their knowledge based research platform for drug repositioning research. Within a consultancy project awarded to her by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the information filtering techniques where used to provided advice on methodological correctness of Econophysics techniques applied to a market cleanliness event study.
Advanced technologies for data visualisation and data mining, developed in the Unit in collaboration with national and international teams, are widely applied for development of medical services. In particular, a system for canine lymphoma diagnosis and monitoring developed with [text removed for publication] has now been successfully tested using clinical data from several veterinary clinics. The risk maps produced by our technology provide early diagnosis of lymphoma several weeks before the clinical symptoms develop. [text removed for publication] has estimated the treatment test, named [text removed for publication], developed with the Unit to add [text removed for publication] to the value of their business. Institute Curie (Paris), applies this data mapping technique and the software that has been developed jointly with Leicester in clinical projects.
Brain diseases cost European healthcare agencies approximately €800 billion each year, but are very poorly understood. Neuroscientists and cyberneticists at the University of Reading study how individual brain cells subserve higher cognitive functions, using brain-computer interfaces to understand how individual cells form neuronal networks. This work has engaged the public imagination through mainstream media, attracted investment from pharmaceutical companies whose drug development programmes demand an understanding of how cellular networks function in the brain and enhanced the use of stem cell derived human neural tissue, thereby enabling a reduction in the use of animals in such research.
The Cybernetics team at the University of Reading works at the frontier of human-machine interaction. The group carries out research on therapy and human enhancement in collaboration with medical professionals, to research new therapeutic treatments for patients with paralysis. Our work has led to the first human implantation of BrainGate, an intelligent deep brain stimulator, and the culturing of neurons within a robot body. Our work has been used by neurosurgeons in experimental human trials with the aim to enhance the standard of living of paralysed individuals. This ground breaking, and sometimes controversial work, has sparked widespread discussion and debate in the public sphere, within the media and at the government level, on the use of machines to enhance humans and vice versa.