Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of microbes to evolve resistance against an antimicrobial treatment. For example, a bacterium can develop resistance to an antibiotic medicine, rendering that medicine ineffective in treating and containing the infection. The loss of effective antibiotics will have a significant impact on our lives, not only increasing the chances of developing a serious infection but also increasing the risk associated with medical procedures. The recent O'Neill review predicts "If we fail to act, we are looking at an almost unthinkable scenario where antibiotics no longer work and we are cast back into the dark ages of medicine". While AMR in bacteria occurs naturally over time, the misuse and overuse of antibiotics is accelerating this process. For example, many infections such as tonsillitis are predominantly (80%) viral and can thus not be treated with antibiotics, yet antibiotics are still prescribed. An obvious solution is to introduce new drugs. However, this is not only very costly but it is also inevitable that resistance to any new medicine will develop. A promising and sustainable solution to the AMR problem is the introduction of diagnostic tests that not only confirm a bacterial infection but also identify the best antibiotic for treating the infection. The aim of this project is to develop a diagnostic that will ensure the right drugs are prescribed at the right time. The technology, called MAPS, is based on silicon photonics. Although developed originally for use in the communications industry, we have shown that this same technology can be used to monitor biology, including bacteria and proteins, with very high sensitivity. We will exploit this technology to create a diagnostic that will identify the type of bacterium and severity of infection, the presence of resistance mechanisms and the most promising antibiotic for treatment. Working with clinical and industrial collaborators, we will demonstrate and validate the technology for the treatment of urinary tract infections and determine a route for taking it to the market.

Our vision is to establish the new field of inorganic intelligence by defining the key fundamental science problems, and by developing researchers equipped with the right skills to explore this emerging area of science. The Cronin Group has made world-leading contributions to foundational aspects of this research and now we need to explore, unify, and develop some of the central science problems. These include how to explore and control, and understand complex chemical systems using robotics and real-time data. We anticipate that the coordinated development of these four topics will lead into applications as diverse as self-assembly control in nano molecules, chemical synthesis and discovery automation or artificial intelligence (AI) optimisation of reactions and exploration and discovery of new underpinning principles. The new grant will continue to unify and develop synergies already established during the previous Platform, but most importantly will ensure continuity and stability. This will enable the team to evolve from focusing on inorganic systems to the digital control and exploration of complex chemical systems. The new Platform will not only contribute to unify the many strands already existing in the team, but will also allow an extension to new disciplines including robotics, machine learning, and development of synergies across those areas - a combination of topics very rarely merged and hence extremely hard to raise funding using other mechanisms. Thus, the new Platform is essential for continuation and the evolution of the research activity, giving added value in integrating the group, allowing us to be strategic and develop the team into the chosen new areas defining the area of 'inorganic intelligence'. The previous grant was instrumental in letting us extend our critical mass, enhance key existing international collaborations, and support inter-group collaborations in Glasgow, which allowed us to speculate and develop our exploratory work in chemical robotics. In addition, we had the flexibility to support and further consolidate some of the existing team, and to hire in new expertise, as well as restructure the team with help from the EPSRC mentor scheme. We need the new platform to continue our team development and provide stability and flexibility especially important during the next few years. As before, we will aim for our best results to be published in Science and Nature, protect innovations by patent applications, and engage a user group and industrialists as well as other world-leading academics to maximise both the academic and technological impact. This will be achieved by making full use of funding from various sources, aiming at areas that need to be developed using the Platform as a consolidating component. We will also seed 'pump-prime' projects within the Platform, provide bridging funding, and be ready to exploit unexpected and high impact results. The Platform will ensure the group remains at critical mass at a critical time, and at the cutting edge of science in a range of new areas.

Regenerative devices (scaffolds, biomaterials and interventions) which can repair and regenerate tissues using the patients` own cells, can be translated into successful clinical products and deliver patient benefit at much lower cost and risk and in shorter timescales then other regenerative therapies such as culture expanded cell therapies or molecular (drug) therapies. It is estimated that the global market for regenerative devices will grow to £50bn by 2020 and this offers a real opportunity to grow a £1bn per year industry in the UK in this field. The UK has genuine research strengths in the areas of biomaterials and tissue engineering, musculoskeletal mechanics (prioritised by EPSRC) and regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine is one of the eight great technologies prioritised across the Research Councils. Research discoveries, new knowledge, outputs and outcomes are often not ready for uptake by industry to take forward through product development to the market and patient benefit. New technologies need to be advanced and de-risked. The clinical needs, potential products and markets need to be defined in order to make them attractive for investment, product development and clinical trials by industry. In the Medical Technologies Innovation and Knowledge Centre (MTIKC) Phase 1, working with industry and clinical partners, we have developed a professional innovation team and a unique innovation and translation process, creating a multidisciplinary research and innovation ecosystem. We have successfully identified research outcomes and new knowledge and created, advanced and translated technology across the innovation valley of death, enabling successful investment (over £100m) by industry and the private sector in new product development. Some products have already progressed to clinical trials and commercialisation and are realising patient benefits. We have established a continuous innovation pipeline of over fifty proofs of concept technology projects. Over the next five years in MTIKC Phase 2, we will address unmet clinical needs and market opportunities in wound repair, cardiovascular repair, musculoskeletal tissue repair, maxillofacial reconstruction, dental reconstruction and general surgery and diversify our research supply chain to over ten other Universities. We will support 150 collaborative projects with industry and initiate forty new industry inspired and academically led proof of concept projects, which are predicted to lead to a further £100m investment by the private sector in subsequent product development. This will enable a sustainable research and product development pipeline to be established in the UK which will support a £1bn / year industry in regenerative devices beyond 2020.

Light has been used for centuries to image the world around us, and continues to provide profound insights across physics, chemistry, biology, materials science and medicine. However, what are the limits of light as a measurement tool? For example, we can use light to image single bacteria, but can we also use light to trap a single bacterium, identify the bacterial strain and assess its susceptibility to antibiotics? How can we image over multiple length scales, from single cells to multiple cellular tissue, in order to comprehensively map all the neuronal connections in the brain? Can we use a combination of resonance with the wave nature and momentum of light to measure the forces associated with the natural and stimulated motion of a single neuronal cell, or even the extremely small forces associated with phenomena at the classical-quantum interface? This proposal aims to answer these questions by exploring new and innovative ways in which we can use light to measure the natural world. This research builds on our recent advances in photonics - the science of generating, controlling and detecting light - and in particular will exploit resonant structures and shaped light. These provide us with tools for controlling the interaction of light and matter with exquisite sensitivity and accuracy. We will run three research strands in parallel and by combining their outputs, we aim to address major Global Challenges in antimicrobial resistance, neurodegenerative disease, multimodal functional imaging and next generation force, torque and microrheology. Our work is supported by a suite of UK and International project partners (both academic and industry) who are enthused to work with us and have committed over £0.5M in kind to the programme.

The specific aim of this project is to develop the QMUL technology to a bench-top powder dispensing system. The commercial product will be market ready within 2 years, providing a lower cost, more accurate system compared to competitors, such as Symyx Powdernium, FlexiWeigh and BIODOT DisPoTM. The bench-top system will act as a first step in validating the technology for scale-up to high-value applications, such as production-line filing of capsules and blisters with pharmaceutical drugs and combinatorial research. The bench-top system will be developed in partnership with Huxley Bertram Ltd, an established engineering company with expertise in designing and developing equipment for the pharmaceutical industry