Wales to Host Centre for NanoHealth

The latest funding brings the total investment secured by the Centre for NanoHealth to £21.6 million. This sum includes £10 million of funding from the Welsh European Funding Office, £7.6 million from Swansea University and £2.5 million from industry.

The Centre for NanoHealth at Swansea University will enable, for example, researchers and scientists to detect biomarkers such as proteins in real time to act as an early warning system of diseases, including cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

Professor Steve Wilks, Co-Director of the Centre and Deputy Head of the School of Engineering, explains, “In vivo sensing is one of the holy grail technologies for the medical profession. By harnessing nanotechnology, scientists and researchers can develop sensors that operate at a level of sensitivity in the parts per billion range.

“It is anticipated that these sensors will allow the detection of certain disease biomarkers within the body at a very early stage and transmit this data to a general practioner or clinician, making early intervention possible.”

The Centre for NanoHealth is a joint project between Swansea University’s Schools of Engineering, Medicine and Physical Sciences and ABM University NHS Trust. Swansea University’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Richard B. Davies, said, “Campus universities provide an ideal environment for multidisciplinary work to flourish. This is important because the big challenges of today do not respect the artificial boundaries between traditional disciplines. The new Centre for NanoHealth goes one stage further: disciplinary boundaries disappear and the Centre creates an innovative academic alignment with the size and quality of facilities to make a major impact. World class research will deliver high technology solutions to major health care challenges in an explicitly multidisciplinary environment and culture.”

The Centre will include business incubation space, and open access nanotechnology and biomedical research and development facilities. This will enable businesses to fully realise the potential of nanotechnology innovation in health care from conception to commercialisation. It is forecast that the Centre will assist approximately 400 companies and create up to 450 new jobs over five years.

Dr Steve Conlan, Co-Director for the Centre for NanoHealth and a Principal Investigator in the Reproductive Biology Group of the School of Medicine, said, “Nanotechnology is widely considered to be the next big thing, with markets associated with nanotechnologies projected to exceed $2.5 trillion within 15 years.”

Tags: Nanotechnology and Microtechnology