New national centre to transform medical imaging
A new £6.8 million research centre based across two Yorkshire universities will aim to transform diagnosis and treatment of patients suffering from cancer, heart disease and musculoskeletal diseases.
New medical imaging facilities will be created at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the University of York.
The funding from the
Medical Research Council is part of a package worth more than £230 million for
universities across Britain announced by Chancellor of the Exchequer George
Osborne on Thursday 23 October.
Researchers from the
University of Leeds and the University of York will work on a new imaging
method which could see the signal in MRI scanners increase up to 100,000 fold.
This will give medical
professionals new insights into the workings of the human body in health and
illness. The new method also has the potential to make the development of new
drugs more effective.
The technique, which is known as Signal Amplification by Reversible Exchange, or SABRE, has been developed by scientists at the University of York. It works by magnetically labelling drugs or substances that occur naturally in the body, without changing their molecular structure, making the method very safe and versatile.
Together with doctors
at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, the researchers at the University of Leeds will be
responsible for applying the technique to patients. For this purpose, a new imaging
centre with a new MRI scanner, patient facilities and a laboratory is being installed
at Leeds General Infirmary. Building work is set to start next year, with the
first patients being recruited for trials in 2016.
The University of York
will use part of the Medical Research Council funding for a new MRI scanner to
replace their existing one.
Professor Sven Plein,
leader of the research team from the School of Medicine at the University of
Leeds, said: This is a great example of bench to bedside research that we hope
will have a profoundly positive impact on the lives of patients.
Together with
colleagues at the University of York, we hope that this technique could in
future be applied to every MRI scanner in the country, massively enhancing how
medical professionals diagnose illness in patients.
Professor Gary Green from the York Neuroimaging Centre
(YNiC) and Professor Simon Duckett, from Yorks Department of Chemistry, lead
the development of SABRE. Professor Green said: It is wonderful and very
exciting that our Wellcome Trust sponsored research will be made available for
use in the clinic. This funding will also allow us extend the use of the
methodology to a much wider range of pharmaceutical and diagnostic agents.
The
development of the SABRE technique in York is being driven forward at a £7m
purpose-built research facility that opened last year. The Centre for
Hyperpolarisation in Magnetic Resonance (CHyM) houses over 30 research
scientists and combines the world-class expertise of research scientists from
the University of Yorks departments of Chemistry, Psychology and Biology, as
well as the Hull York Medical School.
The SABRE
project has already gained over £12m investment from the Wellcome Trust, Bruker
Biospin and the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC).
George Osborne also
announced that the University of Leeds has also received a further grant of
£1.1 million to explore how single cells in the body operate and how they
evolve as a result of disease.
The aim of this
project is to improve diagnosis of genetic diseases, as well as to study how
early-stage cancer cells evolve and how they develop0 into aggressive forms of
cancer.
Other goals of the
project, to be based at Leeds Teaching Hospitals and the University of Leeds,
include studying key events surrounding infection of cells by viruses and
improving the number of different data collection methods that can be applied
to one cell.
Professor David
Bonthron, of the School of Medicine, who is leading the project for the
University of Leeds, said: We hope that the new discoveries we make during
this project will translate very quickly to benefitting patients.
This new facility
will allow us to develop internationally competitive research programmes in
genetics and other areas of biomedicine.
The new facility will
be managed jointly by the University of Leeds and Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS
Trust. Experts from the Faculty of Biological Sciences and the Faculty of
Mathematics and Physical Sciences will also be involved in the project.
Julian Hartley, Chief
Executive of Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: These investments are
fantastic news, bringing further high quality research to our hospitals and
putting us and our partners at the cutting edge of the development of new
technology with potentially vital benefits for future patients. These exciting
projects will enhance our already strong joint working with the two
universities and our local NHS partners.