Super Sniffers go on Trial


A specialist team of researchers have been awarded more than £500,000 by the UK Government to find out if specially-trained bio-detection dogs could be used as a new rapid testing measure for Covid-19.


The initial stage of the project, a collaboration between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Medical Detection Dogs and Durham University, aims to determine whether the dogs are able to detect coronavirus in humans from odour sample, even if they are asymptomatic.


The team has previously worked together to successfully prove that dogs can be trained to sniff out the scent of malaria, while others have been shown to effectively detect specific conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and some cancers in humans with high levels of accuracy.


If the trial gathers sufficient evidence, the first set of dogs could be deployed to key points of entry into the UK within six months to assist with the rapid screening of people travelling from abroad.


The initial phase of the trial will see the collection of samples from NHS staff in London hospitals, following which six bio- detection dogs, a mixture of Labradors and Cocker Spaniels, will undergo thorough training.


More than ten years of research by the charity, Medical Detection Dogs has shown that dogs, which could each screen up to 250 people per hour, can be trained to detect the odour of disease at the equivalent dilution of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools of water.


If successful, these dogs could provide a fast and non- invasive detection method to support additional testing efforts used for Covid-19.


52525pr@reply-direct.com Crick Researcher Receives Prestigious Award


In recognition of his outstanding research, Luiz Carvalho, group leader of the Mycobacterial Metabolism and Antibiotic Research Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute has received an American Chemical Society (ACS) Infectious Diseases Young Investigator Award. Over his career so far, Luiz has focused on the bacterial infection tuberculosis (TB) and related antibiotic research. His group at the Crick now works on the discovery and characterisation of biochemical, metabolic and pharmacological processes in the disease.


One major project led by Luiz, recently uncovered important findings about how the antibiotic D-cycloserine works, which could lead to new treatments for drug resistant TB.


International Project to join fight against Coronavirus


As part of a €14 million EU-funded international consortium for Covid-19 advanced diagnostics, scientists at the University of Southampton are leading molecular phenotyping research activities based on quantitative measurement of thousands of biomolecules such as genes and proteins, to measure biological pathway activity for better understanding of diseases. The project, called DRAGON (rapid and secure AI imaging- based diagnosis, stratification, follow-up, and preparedness for coronavirus pandemics), will design and build a patient-centred system that will employ imaging and molecular phenotyping data of Covid-19 patients from across Europe. Artificial intelligence techniques will be used to create a system to inform medical decisions about patient care. Diana Baralle, Professor of Genomic Medicine and Consultant in Clinical Genetics at Southampton said: “This is a large collaborative international project, in which the University’s Faculty of Medicine, Biological Sciences and spin-out companies, TopMD and Synairgen will have a central role. The Covid-19 clinical studies we are undertaking and the patient samples collected from those, may provide vital clues to questions such as who gets affected more severely and whether patients are responding to treatment. Collaboration – between universities, hospitals and companies – will maximise the advances we are going to make through this project.” Dr James Schofield, co-founder of TopMD, said: “As Covid-19 infections continue to spread, DRAGON will make a real contribution to the rapid development of advanced diagnostics to support patient care.”


DRAGON is being led by OncoRadiomics, a Belgian company that uses AI to develop medical products and services, in partnership with 21 SMEs, academic research institutions, biotech and pharma partners, patient-centred organisations and professional societies from the UK, Belgium, China, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland. As well as scientists, citizens and patients will be involved the development of the system. The University of Southampton has been awarded funding worth €248,523 and TopMD has been awarded €649,000 for the three-year project.


52528pr@reply-direct.com Luiz Carvalho Science as Art – Engineering living Materials and Patterns


Physicists and biologists at the University of Warwick have teamed up to develop a new method [1] for engineering living materials that could see a transformation in tissue engineering and bio-art, as well as new ways to research cellular interactions. Living cells have many properties that non-living materials simply don’t. The ability of controlling the emergent behaviours of cells and organising them into arbitrary patterns is a key step forward towards utilising living materials, for uses such as organs on a chip. This is why new technologies are being developed to obtain such an ability. Grounded on the physics of meniscus generation, the researchers applied the new technique called MeniFludics, to create structures into gel surfaces. Evaporation of water from gel materials lead to formation of open channels which can be used for guiding the direction and speed of cellular expansion.


Dr Vasily Kantsler, from Department of Physics at Warwick said: “I believe that our catchy named (Menifluidics) technique will enable new opportunities in biophysical and biomedical research and applications such as antibiotic resistance and biofouling” Dr Munehiro Asally, from School of Life Science added: “We hope MeniFluidics will be used widely by biophysics, microbiologists, engineers and also artists! As it is a simple and versatile method.”


A bacterial biofilm patterned using Meni- Fluidics. Credit:University of Warwick


[1] Published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology, titled ‘Pattern engineering of living bacterial colonies using meniscus-driven fluidic channels’


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Capture and Storage of CO2 meet some Targets


A new EPSRC-supported study by Imperial College London, has predicted that the world is currently on track to fulfil scenarios on diverting atmospheric CO2


to underground reservoirs. The capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) underground


is one of the key components of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) reports keeping global warming to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) would be used alongside other interventions such as renewable energy, energy efficiency, and electrification of the transportation sector. Dr Christopher Zahasky Department of Earth Science and Engineering said, “Our study shows that if climate change targets are not met by 2100, it won’t be for a lack of carbon capture and storage space”.


The IPCC used models to create around 1,200 technology scenarios whereby climate change targets are met using a mix of these interventions, most of which require the use of CCS.


Likely to


Now a new analysis from Imperial College London suggests that just 2,700 Gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO2


) would


be sufficient to meet the IPCC’s global warming targets. This is far less than leading estimates by academic and industry groups of what is available, which suggest there is more than 10,000 Gt of CO2


storage space globally.


It also found that that the current rate of growth in the installed capacity of CCS is on track to meet some of the targets identified in IPCC reports, and that research and commercial efforts should focus on maintaining this growth while identifying enough underground space to store this much CO2


.


This project was funded as part of the UK Centre for Carbon Capture & Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC) and the findings are published in Energy & Environmental Science.


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Around 1.7 million people die of TB globally each year, with some of highest rates seen in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.


On receiving the news, Luiz said: “Receiving this award means a lot to me. I am super excited about a number of ongoing projects in my lab and the plan is to continue investigating the metabolism and biology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that causes TB”. “I am indebted to my family, colleagues, mentors and collaborators and to the Wellcome Trust and the Crick for allowing me to carry out bold, imaginative blue-sky research on the world’s most important bacterial pathogen.”


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