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Novel bioluminescent bacterial biosensors developed at UWE, Bristol, and commercialised by Randox, have been used by a range of companies to demonstrate effectiveness of drugs and decontamination procedures. This has improved development processes at companies including Clavis Pharma, Purest Solutions and Dycem, leading to new manufacturing processes and quality control test methods. The biosensors are used in novel applications to give pharmacodynamic data on effectiveness of drugs and real time in-situ demonstration of effectiveness of decontamination processes. These biosensors, pioneered and developed by Vyv Salisbury's group, have been commercially adopted and used for evaluation by at least six collaborating companies.
Pre-eclampsia is a major contributor to death and disability in pregnancy. Diagnosis, based on accurate blood pressure (BP)/proteinuria determination, is limited by measurement errors and being late features of the disease. In collaboration with industry, King's College London (KCL) researchers have developed an inexpensive, accurate, simple BP device suitable for rural clinics. This device allows intervention to reduce mortality/morbidity and is currently being rolled out in a Gates Foundation project in Africa and Asia. KCL researchers have also helped the company Alere Inc. with the development of a diagnostically accurate test of placental growth factor (PlGF) in women with suspected pre-eclampsia: Alere Triage®PlGF. This demonstrates high sensitivity, superior to current tests, and following commercialisation is being adopted internationally. Their work is additionally reflected in guidelines of international standards for BP device accuracy.
Evidence about the need for and provision of health visiting services generated through research undertaken at King's College London (KCL) has underpinned major changes in national policies for health visiting. Our findings about health visitors' practice, availability and distribution of services and effectiveness in terms of parenting/child outcomes, revealed both shortfalls in provision and opportunities for improvement and led to the development of a new caseload weighting tool and funding model for service planning. The accumulated evidence from this research helped convince the UK Government in 2010 to commit to 4,200 more health visitors by 2015 — a workforce expansion of nearly 50% — in a time of austerity and restraint elsewhere in the public sector.
As a result of our discoveries of a new splice variant (ASIC1b) and a new member (ASIC4) of the ASIC family, and elucidation of their roles in pain caused by tissue acidity, several pharmaceutical companies are now working on ASIC-targeted analgesics and one company has been set up specifically to focus on this work. ASIC-related therapies for a wide variety of conditions are now in clinical trials, with substantial patient involvement. Our work has allowed new therapeutic applications to be conceived for already existing prescribed compounds, and for naturally-occurring compounds, that act on ASICs. Thus, our research on ASICs has had clinical and commercial impact.
Collaboration between Imperial College Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Surgery led to the development of active constraint robot solutions which augment surgeon skills so that joint replacement components are implanted accurately and successfully. This led to the founding of Acrobot to develop innovative surgical technologies. Acrobot was acquired by Stanmore Implants Worldwide in 2010. An orthopaedic stereotaxic instrument, based on Imperial research, obtained US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance in 2013. This has led to Mako-Surgical purchasing Stanmore Implants Acrobot technology in April 2013.
Childhood obesity is a national problem but it is a problem even more keenly felt in the West Midlands where statistics show the percentage of children classified as obese is higher than the national average. Research demonstrating that simple measures such as waist circumference and body mass index (BMI) are every bit as effective as complex and expensive measuring processes such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans in identifying high risk obese children has fed into the evaluation and subsequent improvement of child weight management programmes in the region and more widely in the UK. It also informed the development of an obesity strategy and action plan for Worcestershire for the period 2008-11.
Research undertaken at the Centre for Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities(CIDD), has significantly impacted upon:
In a series of training studies on children between the ages of 5 and 12 years, a research team at the Department of Psychology successfully demonstrated that substantial improvements in roadside decision-making and behaviour can be achieved in children as young as 5 years. Based on their findings, the team developed and evaluated a training intervention (Kerbcraft) aimed at improving children's pedestrian skills through practical roadside activities which was formally adopted by the UK government. Since 2008, the majority of 5-7 year old children in the UK have received formal pedestrian skills training using Kerbcraft either in its full or adapted form. Kerbcraft now plays a key role in the UK Government's road safety strategy and has been cited as an example of best practice by the World Health Organisation and safety agencies across Europe, the US, Australia and in developing countries such as Ethiopia and Bangladesh.
Reduction of unpleasant ambient noise during MRI has been enabled through innovative engineering solutions developed at the Medical Research Council Institute of Hearing Research (MRC IHR). Intellectual property was licensed to Optoacoustics Ltd and the resulting OptoActive™ active noise-cancelling headphones for MRI are the only one of their type commercially available, enabling free conversation between patients and clinicians. The product was formally launched in September 2012 and has worldwide sales including in the USA, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Edinburgh Designs Ltd., (EDL) was spun-out to exploit ERPE research from the original Wave Power Group. With six staff and an annual turnover approaching £2M EDL has supplied the equipment and control systems for wave tanks in 19 countries including the world's largest computer-controlled wave test facility, the US Navy Manoeuvring and Station Keeping Tank. They are currently completing the world's first circular tank, combining waves with currents in any relative direction, which is operated by the 6 person company, "FloWave" EDL, still run by the founding staff, it is the world-leading supplier of wave-making technology for scientific and recreational facilities.