̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences (CATS)

Joining the dots

skbf2 — Wed, 26 May 2021 12:03:01 +0000

A new online community of researchers, businesses and healthcare providers is bringing the future of medicine one step closer.

Cambridge is one of the UK’s leading centres of life sciences and innovation. Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� and the world-leading research institutes on our doorstep have contributed to major breakthroughs in healthcare. Monoclonal antibodies, IVF and gene sequencing technologies are just some of the life-changing innovations to have emerged from the Cambridge Cluster.

̽��ֱ��need to connect

Cambridge is also a research powerhouse in maths, physics, computer science and engineering. ̽��ֱ��future of healthcare - earlier detection, better diagnostics, more-personalised medicine - lies where these disciplines meet. Maths and computer science, for example, are driving advances in AI which will help us to better understand biological processes (and hence where to target drugs), interrogate the vast genomic datasets that underpin personalised medicine and improve how clinical trials are run. Inventing new diagnostics and medical devices, using new materials and new processes such as additive manufacturing, needs both medical and engineering know-how.

There are plenty of examples of powerful interdisciplinary collaborations in the ̽��ֱ��, such as the new Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. But finding out who does what and connecting the right people across a complex ecosystem is not always easy. An already difficult task is made harder by the fact that researchers in different disciplines, executives in large companies, entrepreneurs and clinicians often talk a very different language and have different expectations of collaborative activities. Once connections have been made, therefore, it can be a challenge to convert them into projects which go on to have a ‘real-world’ impact.

A clear vision

Connect: Health Tech, a Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone was set up in 2019 with funding from Research England expressly to bridge these interdisciplinary and inter-organisational gaps through a range of activities. A roadmapping exercise was carried out, using innovation management techniques developed at the ̽��ֱ��’s Institute for Manufacturing. Key stakeholders were brought together to identify the top five barriers to collaboration and the best ways to overcome them. ̽��ֱ��report, Creating a ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone for Cambridge across the life and physical sciences, will be published in June 2021.

Building a community

̽��ֱ��roadmap identified a clear need: a digital way of connecting and collaborating with people across the Cambridge ecosystem. A year later, we are delighted to be launching, a new, easy-to-navigate online community where the physical and life sciences can meet, along with entrepreneurs, large corporates, venture capitalists, science parks, National Health Service and member organisations. While focused on Cambridge initially, in time we hope that it will help community members forge connections further afield and expand the geographical boundaries of the ecosystem to create the right environment for ideas, start-ups, innovation and co-creation to thrive.

̽��ֱ��idea of Connect: Health Tech is to ‘join the dots’, to help researchers from different disciplines to find each other and other resources they might need, whether that is mentorship, skills, equipment, funding or physical space. For businesses, it’s about all that as well as being a welcoming, easy-to-navigate way into the complexity of the ̽��ֱ�� and the wider Cambridge cluster.

Getting successful collaborations off the ground often relies on the efforts of a relatively small group of people who have the knowledge and expertise to make connections – and broker relationships - across projects, disciplines and sectors. Connect: Health Tech brings these ‘super-connectors’ together in one place, creating a hugely powerful resource that, we hope, will both bring people together and provide the support they need to take collaborations forward.

How it works

Users will be able to find new contacts and networks and the community can post events, funding opportunities and jobs of interest. Special interest groups will encourage businesses and academics to discuss areas of common interest, with the topics chosen to catalyse inter-disciplinary interactions across the physical and life sciences. In time, the intention is that businesses will use these groups to share the challenges they face so the community can help solve real world problems

If Connect: Health Tech is successful it will benefit everyone – business, academia and patients. We want to see it leading to stronger and deeper interaction between physicists, material scientists, chemists, engineers, biotechnologists, biologists and clinicians across academia and industry leading to more clinically beneficial projects. And we hope it will strengthen the already rich pipeline of healthcare spin-outs, start-ups and SMEs that emerge and flourish in the Cambridge Cluster.

Please join us

With this blog comes an open invitation for businesses and individuals to join the online community and to get involved. ̽��ֱ��link is here. We will ask you a few short questions about why you want to join, what expertise you bring and what your expectations of it are. ̽��ֱ��platform is designed to enable informal connections and provide an easy way into Cambridge through individuals. It’s not a searchable website, it’s a live discussion forum with access to real people. I look forward to seeing and connecting with you there!

Dr Kathryn Chapman
Deputy Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute
and ̽��ֱ�� Relationship Manager for the Cambridge-AstraZeneca Partnership

May 2021

Shutterstock

Surgical robot

Young at heart

cjb250 — Wed, 13 Mar 2019 14:03:28 +0000

Improvements in public health, education and medicine mean that our lives are much longer than at any point in human history. Thanks to studies of volunteers from the eastern region, we may be able to spend these extra years living independently and in good health.

Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences receives Wellcome funding to support translational research

cjb250 — Tue, 05 Dec 2017 16:19:57 +0000

Cambridge is one six institutions to receive funding to create partnerships with Wellcome. ̽��ֱ��others are the Universities of Bristol, Edinburgh and Manchester, Imperial College London, and Oxford ̽��ֱ�� through the Mahidol Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit.

Researchers can face a number of barriers to taking the first step to translating their research – and often need more than financial support, including mentorship and regulatory advice, say Wellcome. Making the transition between discovery science and translation easier is one of the core aims of Wellcome’s Innovation for Impact strategy.

Through its new translational partnerships, Wellcome says it will explore new ways of supporting transition and to share best practice. Support through the new partnerships will be primarily, but not exclusively, for Wellcome-supported scientists and will include a portfolio of activities, such as: developing seed funds, identifying mentors and entrepreneurs in residence; offering access to Wellcome’s network of advisers, experts and mentors; and providing introductions to potential partners to take promising advances forward.

"We want to make sure there’s every opportunity for the people and organisations we support to translate great scientific discoveries into innovations with broad, lasting impact," says Stephen Caddick, Director of Innovation at Wellcome.

Wellcome says it will continue to identify new partners in order to build a broad global network to help share and spread great ideas and practice in translation and innovation.

Professor Chris Abell, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, says: “We are very grateful to Wellcome for its support, which will help us foster new and innovative approaches to important health questions. ̽��ֱ��funding will allow us to encourage unique and unexpected collaborations that bring in expertise from across the ̽��ֱ��, including from outside traditional biomedical disciplines.

“We expect, too, to capitalise on our position within the largest biotech cluster outside the United States, to stimulate new partnerships with industry. These collaborations will provide an important pipeline of ideas that we hope will ultimately translate to tangible patient benefits.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences (CATS) has been awarded £1million over two years by Wellcome as a part of a new scheme to find new ways to translate scientific discoveries into real world impact.

̽��ֱ��funding will allow us to encourage unique and unexpected collaborations that bring in expertise from across the ̽��ֱ��, including from outside traditional biomedical disciplines

Chris Abell

̽��ֱ��Future of Medicine

̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes

Future therapeutics: the hundred-year horizon scan

lw355 — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 08:04:43 +0000

It used to be all about fleabane for bites from venomous beasts, mugwort to induce and ease the pain of labour and boiled bedstraw to stimulate clotting. According to Nicholas Culpeper in his 1652 book ̽��ֱ��English Physitian, “a man may preserve his Body in Health; or cure himself, being sick, for three pence charge, with such things only as grow in England”.

Prescient words, in some respects – today it’s still all about giving the right patient the right drug, at the right dose at the right time, but it’s called precision medicine.

In fact, herbal remedies and small-molecule pharmaceuticals have dominated therapeutic medicines since Culpeper’s time, before being joined in the 1980s by ‘biologics’ when it became possible to build new forms of proteins, hormones, receptors and monoclonal antibodies after the DNA code was cracked in Cambridge in 1953.

Science moves fast and we now stand at the threshold of not one but several step changes. New understanding of the structures of cells and systems biology is pioneering the use of human and microbial cells as therapeutic agents. Meanwhile, novel bioelectronic medicines or ‘electroceuticals’ are shifting the therapeutic approach away from traditional medicines into optics, electronics, instrumentation and software. What will these and other developments in areas such as immunotherapy and nanotherapy mean to medicine over the next hundred years? And what’s taking place now in Cambridge to help this happen?

There seems little doubt that with increased genetic knowledge, precision medicine will define the 21st century. ̽��ֱ��development of massively parallel DNA sequencing by the Department of Chemistry moves us closer to the prospect of sequencing one billion kilobases per day per machine. Genomic information and computational approaches will refine diagnoses, stratify cancer into subtypes, guide personalised treatments and improve the efficiency of clinical trials.

Meanwhile, cell-based technologies provide exquisitely selective delivery agents that are naturally able to perform therapeutic tasks. In Cambridge, progress in regenerative medicine promises benefits for replacing human cells, tissues or organs; and the use of stem cells to manage and treat diabetes, degenerative nerve, bone and joint conditions, and heart failure.

̽��ֱ��convergence of information technologies like augmented reality, cloud-based applications, artificial intelligence and deep learning in digital healthcare will play an increasing role in medical decision support, robotic nursing and surgery, sensors and diagnostics, and so on.

So-called beyond-the-pill services, such as wearables, apps, medical tattoos and point-of-care sensors will offer consumers digital devices for monitoring health and compliance, although issues such as privacy, data integrity and cybersecurity remain concerns to be resolved satisfactorily in the ‘internet of people’.

Research into these key future technologies is being conducted in the Departments of Engineering, Materials Science and Physics, and the Centre for the Physics of Medicine. Meanwhile, the newly established Alan Turing Institute and the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence bring world-leading expertise in big data, computer science, advanced mathematics and artificial intelligence.

How is the pharmaceutical industry responding to these shifting patterns in modern medical treatments? Global research-based companies have suffered from the downturn in the global economy, the demise of the blockbuster era and the rise in specialist markets. Industry is adapting by placing more emphasis on new therapeutic modalities and repurposing existing drugs, as well as strengthening academic–pharma collaborations at earlier stages of the drug discovery process.

̽��ֱ��Milner Therapeutics Institute, due to open in 2018, will foster close collaborative interactions between academia and industry to accelerate medical advancement via an ‘open borders’ paradigm. So too will Apollo Therapeutics, a £40m collaboration between the tech transfer offices of Cambridge, Imperial College London and ̽��ֱ�� College London and three global pharmaceutical industries (AstraZeneca, GSK and Johnson & Johnson) to streamline the academia-to-industry pipeline.

New technologies are likely to change the regulatory, legal and policy environments, and business models. For example, some forms of medicine – like gene editing – are both personalised and curative. How will the costs of research, development and marketing for ‘cures’ be met if the business model is more likely to be a service than a product?

Understanding complex issues such as these will be aided by the networks and convening power established by the Centre for Science and Policy, which coordinates the best scientific thinking to inform public policy, and the Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences, which focuses on the legal and ethical challenges at the forefront of biomedicine. Meanwhile, the Institute for Manufacturing is analysing supply chains, and the Judge Business School is studying the management of innovation and entrepreneurship.

It’s likely that future healthcare will have a different geometry. A complex interplay of patients, industries and service operators will use sophisticated diagnostic tools, digital scrutiny and interpretation using artificial intelligence, and have access to an extensive toolbox of therapeutic approaches, all personalised to the individual patient, and available through a redesigned primary and hospital healthcare environment.

Cambridge is well placed to drive innovation in this highly multidisciplinary therapeutic scenario.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has expertise relevant to all stages of the drug discovery, development and manufacturing process, from fundamental biology/chemistry, through drug development and clinical trials, to imaging, safety, delivery, supply-chain management and entrepreneurship.

There’s also large-scale investment in research and infrastructure for tackling disease. Take dementia, for instance: more than £17m awarded by the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund will help build a Chemistry of Health building for chemistry-based research in neurodegenerative diseases. Cambridge also hosts one of three UK Drug Discovery Institutes funded by Alzheimer’s Research UK (ARUK), and is one of five centres that will form the UK Dementia Research Institute, funded by the Medical Research Council, Alzheimer’s Society and ARUK.

Against this backdrop of activity, the Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences (CATS) has been established to increase the linking of academic research to big pharma, biotech and NHS structures on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and in the region. ̽��ֱ��idea is to create a networking, training and enterprise structure that transcends traditional boundaries between clinicians, academics and industrialists, in which fundamental and applied research into diagnostics and therapeutics can flourish and be translated into patient treatments with maximum efficiency.

̽��ֱ��time is ripe for this to happen. AstraZeneca’s move to Cambridge, combined with close links with GSK and other big pharma companies, as well as the thriving local biotechnology industrial environment and sister institutes like the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, provide substantial impetus to co-develop and co-deliver these programmes.

In fact, one might thank Nicholas Culpeper for his vision for the future of medicine and at the same time upgrade his estimate of ‘three pence charge’ with 36 decades of financial inflation.

Inset image: Read more about research on future therapeutics in Research Horizons magazine.

How will precision medicine define 21st-century therapeutics? What will future healthcare look like? And what actually lies ‘beyond the pill’? Professor Chris Lowe, inaugural Director of the Cambridge Academy of Therapeutic Sciences, takes the long view on the future of therapeutics.

Future healthcare will have a different geometry... sophisticated diagnostic tools, cloud-based applications, artificial intelligence... an extensive toolbox of therapeutic approaches, all personalised to the individual.

Chris Lowe

̽��ֱ��District

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

Yes