̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - enterprise

Harnessing the power of innovation

skbf2 — Tue, 04 Jun 2024 14:57:18 +0000

Diarmuid O'Brien, the ̽��ֱ��'s new Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Innovation on what makes Cambridge such an enterprising place and what we can achieve through partnerships and our innovation ecosystem.

Making peace

skbf2 — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 17:35:53 +0000

Enterprising Mind João Costa has turned a philosophical idea into a practical tool for resolving real-world conflict.

Strategy unveiled to boost innovation in Cambridge

skbf2 — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:55:21 +0000

̽��ֱ��Innovate Cambridge Summit saw over 400 leaders from across the civic, business and academic working communities to support the science and technology cluster to maintain its position as a world leader amid fierce international competition.

Cambridge has evolved into a global innovation hub over the last 30 years, with over 5,500 knowledge-intensive businesses generating revenues exceeding £20bn annually and 23 billion-dollar unicorn companies born in the city. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is also the number one university in the world for producing successful tech founders, ahead of Harvard and MIT, with over 500 alumni founders raising more than $10 million in funding.

Recognising this, the city and its innovation ecosystem is now presented with a generational opportunity to maximise economic and social return. International benchmarking indicates that Cambridge can do more to enhance its position in the global innovation landscape.

This new home-grown innovation strategy, which has had input from 200 organisations, including Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Cambridge Innovation Capital, AstraZeneca, Microsoft, ARM, Darktrace, Cambridge City Council, and Cambridge County Council and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority will propel the ecosystem towards a groundbreaking future.

In the past twelve months, the Cambridge ecosystem has seen significant collaboration, with over 200 organisations endorsing an Innovation Charter and extensive consultations involving more than 500 individuals to craft an innovation strategy. ̽��ֱ��culmination of these efforts, Innovate Cambridge, seeks to leverage the city's unique position as a driver of Britain’s growth, fostering collaboration, and catalysing innovation for the benefit of local communities and the broader UK.

In pursuit of this vision, Innovate Cambridge has identified three strategic goals:

An innovation ecosystem firing on all cylinders. Innovate Cambridge envisions improved health and social care, optimised energy use, and enhanced agricultural outcomes through world-leading life sciences research and AI applications. ̽��ֱ��focus will be on creating a green growth strategy, fostering economic growth, and supporting social infrastructure.
Ensuring the innovation ecosystem provides value and impact for the local community. Innovate Cambridge aims to increase collaboration within and beyond the region, formalising partnerships with other innovation hubs and economic centres. ̽��ֱ��initiative strives to deliver high-quality employment and training opportunities while ensuring benefits extend beyond geographical limits.
Forming partnerships with other regions and collaborators to drive scale and deliver social and economic benefits. By 2035, Innovate Cambridge aims to achieve significant economic, social, and environmental impact through collaborations and partnerships. Practical infrastructure issues, such as water scarcity and transportation, are addressed in conjunction with local government and Cambridge Ahead.

"Innovation is critical to local, national and global prosperity and central to the UK's economic success. Cambridge is the UK's leading research-based innovation ecosystem. A recent analysis found that spinouts and start-ups associated with the ̽��ֱ�� contributed over £18bn to the UK economy and there are many other companies within the Cambridge ecosystem without a direct connection to the ̽��ֱ�� that make a further significant contribution." Professor Andy Neely OBE, Senior Pro-Vice-Chancellor, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

“ ̽��ֱ��City Council has an important placemaking and leadership role for the whole city. We want Cambridge to be an even better place to live, work and study, and ensure the city maintains its status as a global innovation hub. Cambridge also has significant challenges around health inequalities, housing affordability, and life changes for disadvantaged young people. That’s why it's vital successful businesses, innovators, and entrepreneurs that have benefited from the unique, nurturing, innovation environment in Cambridge to give back to the city in a more tangible way.” Robert Pollock, Chief Executive, Cambridge City Council

"This strategy represents a pivotal moment for the innovation ecosystem in Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��collaboration of over 200 organisations has yielded a strategic roadmap that provides a shared vision for Cambridge as a global innovation hub. This initiative, rooted in inclusivity and sustainability, will drive positive economic and social impacts for the local community. Cambridge Enterprise is proud to be part of this ambitious endeavour, and we look forward to fostering groundbreaking discoveries and translating them into world-changing businesses." Dr Diarmuid O'Brien, Chief Executive, Cambridge Enterprise

“Innovation is critical to local, national and global prosperity and central to the wider UK growth agenda, and Cambridge remains the most intensive science and technological cluster in the world. It is an ecosystem where companies have the potential to go from lab to market quicker than anywhere else. We excel in life sciences, deep tech, and interdisciplinary research; and the city is home to a blend of start-ups and global leaders. ̽��ֱ��fact that so many of those stakeholders and businesses have now come up with an inclusive, forward-looking plan to ensure the city continues to innovate, compete, and deliver impact on a global scale, fills me with enormous pride.” Michael Anstey, Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital

News release first published by Cambridge Enterprise

An ambitious new strategy to nurture and grow its innovation ecosystem has been unveiled at Cambridge summit.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Inclusion, innovation... and cocktail curation

skbf2 — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 10:45:19 +0000

Co-founder and CEO of Start Codon, Jason Mellad on helping healthcare start-ups thrive and why inclusion and diversity will change the world.

Cambridge start-up wins funding to develop new diagnostics

skbf2 — Mon, 20 Mar 2023 14:25:48 +0000

̽��ֱ��first Innovate UK award, received in 2021, allowed SMi to partner with the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Disease, the Medicines Discovery Catapult and the National Physical Laboratory to develop its technology for testing for respiratory diseases. ̽��ֱ��second award, made in early 2023, is helping SMi and its partners apply the same technology to detecting cancer.

Co-founded in 2018 by former ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge researcher Dr Andrew Thompson, SMi is developing a new technology that analyses samples using super-resolution imaging. ̽��ֱ��technology can detect, quantify and characterise single molecules that are of interest, including DNA, RNA and protein molecules associated with specific diseases. It can visualise what other technologies cannot see and very rapidly batch analyse hundreds of samples with extremely high accuracy.

̽��ֱ��first round of £1.9m funding enabled SMi to develop its platform, used for the simultaneous screening of common respiratory diseases. ̽��ֱ��COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the need for rapid and cost-effective diagnostic testing on a massive scale. Test accuracy and the ability to identify new variants were critical.

̽��ֱ��second Innovate UK award has funded the application of SMi’s platform to cancer diagnosis by enabling work with another team of specialists at the Medicines Discovery Catapult. Here the same single molecule visualisation approach is being used to detect and quantify cancer biomarkers in patient blood samples. This will help clinicians to make more accurate assessments, and combined with the flexibility, accuracy, speed and high throughput of SMi’s technology, could reduce diagnostic backlogs and provide patients with their results much sooner.

SMi’s aim has always been to create a user-friendly, automated benchtop instrument that can be used in both research and healthcare settings. Initial instrument designs were guided by consultation with NHS trusts and the NIHR Medical Devices Testing and Evaluation Centre (MD-TEC), while prototypes have been tested in labs at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the Medicines Discovery Catapult and the National Physical Laboratory. Commercial production will be outsourced to a medical device manufacturer in the East of England.

SMi’s CEO Dr Andrew Thompson said: “SMi is creating a highly accurate and user-friendly platform that is based upon single molecule imaging, meaning that we can detect individual molecules that are invisible to other technologies. With an approach that allows them to reliably monitor single molecules, SMi provides scientists and clinicians with a quality of data that is unprecedented. Such capabilities are likely to have far-reaching benefits for diagnosis and the discovery of new medicines. Our Innovate UK funding is allowing us to work with very highly qualified research and clinical partners, providing a means to accelerate our product development and realise these opportunities sooner.”

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Institute for Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases has been leading the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s collaboration with SMi. Ravindra Gupta, Professor of Clinical Microbiology, and named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year in 2020 for his work on HIV, said: “SMi’s platform is incredibly exciting and could revolutionise testing for a range of diseases. We have been fortunate to partner with SMi on SARS-CoV-2 detection, and application could extend to identification of specific genetic variants of pathogens as well as cancers.”

Dr Tammy Dougan, Life Science and Healthcare Partnership Lead in the ̽��ֱ��’s Strategic Partnerships Office, said: “This is a great example of a Cambridge start-up winning Innovate UK funding and using it to build effective collaborations between research partners to take a new technology out of the lab and into clinical practice.”

Since 2018, SMi has grown into a team of sixteen, including scientists, mechanical engineers, software engineers and medical device specialists based in two locations: the outskirts of Cambridge and the West Coast of the USA.

Cambridge start-up SMi and its research partners have received two Innovate UK awards to progress their work on testing for infectious diseases and detecting biomarkers for cancer.

Andrew Brookes, Getty Images:

Pipetting sample into a tray

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Cambridge spin-out receives £2.2 million to help improve cancer treatments

skbf2 — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 09:45:06 +0000

̽��ֱ��spinout from the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology has been awarded this funding by the European Innovation Council’s (EIC) ‘Transition Challenge’ investment programme which supports the development and commercialisation of innovative technologies.

This capital will allow Vector to develop its novel RNA delivery platform, increasing the safety, specificity and effectiveness of RNA therapies. ̽��ֱ��technology builds on more than 15 years of research in innovative materials and drug delivery by Professor David Fairen-Jimenez and his team.

Fairen-Jimenez, who is also Chief Executive Officer at Vector Bioscience, says: “RNA-therapies are, potentially, the most powerful cancer drugs. However, their targeted delivery remains a challenge. Our preliminary studies in vitro and in vivo have showcased the outstanding possibilities of our platform, leading to excellent efficacies with outstanding biocompatibility. Now, the EIC ‘Transition Challenge’ funds will help us take these discoveries to the clinic.”

Vector’s platform improves the targeted delivery of macromolecules – particularly RNA delivery. ̽��ֱ��technology is based on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), nanoparticles that carry RNA molecules to their targets. MOFs have a number of advantages as a delivery mechanism: they offer controlled release of the RNA macromolecules, improving safety and selectivity. They also protect the RNA from degradation and increase their solubility and bioavailability.

Vector’s technology has shown promising results treating complicated cancers, including hard-to-treat tumours in the brain, lung and pancreas.

Established in 2021, Vector Bioscience has already been awarded £500k from Innovate UK. Now, with the additional investment from the EIC, it is in a position to design and develop its RNA delivery platform, with applications across different diseases.

Lluna Gallego-Segrelles, Chief Operating Officer at Vector Bioscience, adds: “Within just 18 months, we have attracted over £3 million in funding to commercialise our technology. This demonstrates there’s an immense interest around our drug delivery platform, which will bring the latest innovations in materials science to the pharmaceutical industry and the clinic. Now, our objective is to push our pioneer treatments into pre-clinical phases.”

Vector Bioscience has received a £2.2 million investment to help it take forward its drug delivery platform designed to make RNA cancer therapies more effective.

Scanning electron microscopy of highly crystalline metal-organic framework nanoparticles

Yes

Taking care of mental health

skbf2 — Thu, 09 Feb 2023 14:22:02 +0000

Psychiatrist, Professor of Neurotechnology and 'Enterprising Mind', Sabine Bahn has founded two companies both with the aim of helping people with mental health disorders get a faster diagnosis and better access to the right treatment.

Meet our enterprising minds

skbf2 — Mon, 14 Nov 2022 10:30:24 +0000

Learn the secrets of their success, what it takes to start a business or social venture and why Cambridge is a great place to try something new.