NIHRDataInsights/HRCSData huggingface dataset:
Title: Cellular Structural Biology
Funder: Wellcome Trust

Abstract: Structural biology continues to provide one of the most important toolsets for molecular biosciences. It also underlies many crucial industries, supporting biomedical advances in drug and vaccine development and molecular engineering. It continues to develop at pace. The recent electron cryo-microscopy revolution has been transformative and advances in tomographic methods prove likely to soon bridge the gap between molecular and cellular levels. It is essential that we train cohorts of students with these tools. We aim to provide outstanding broad training in structural biology methods, while students conduct exciting research projects. We expect these cohorts to contain future academic research leaders, who apply structural biology to important cellular systems and/or contribute to development of methodologies. We aim to train future leaders of industry, equipping them for research and development. Our program will also prepare students for a wide range of other future careers, providing project management experience, programming skills, and the experience of working in a precise and numerically rigorous scientific field. We will equip and support our students to transition to careers in academia, industry and beyond, while ensuring that we train a cohort to continue to apply and to develop structural biology into the future.


Research activity codes: 1.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (UNDERPINNING)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: University of Cambridge PhD Programme for Clinicians
Funder: Wellcome Trust

Abstract: This programme recruits clinicians of outstanding calibre nationwide. With the largest concentration of biomedical science in Europe in laboratories on the Campus or wider Cambridge, we offer research training of highest quality that spans the spectrum from basic science through experimental medicine to epidemiology and public health. Strong, ongoing, mentorship is central to our programme; this, coupled with carefully chosen placements in laboratories empowers fellows to make better-informed choices of research and supervisor, including interdisciplinary projects. During PhD training, we aim to maximise their potential to acquire research skills and achieve a doctorate linked to significant discoveries and publications. With continued, intensive, guidance postdoctorally via established mechanisms, we guide fellows into pathways (e.g. higher research fellowships, clinical lecturer posts) that are tailored to individual progress, balancing re-entry into clinical training with maintaining research momentum. Our vision is to strengthen and broaden this model to include fellowships at veterinary and MBPhD level; and, in partnership with the University of East Anglia, extend opportunities to trainees throughout the region and add research diversity with a new theme in Gastroenterology, Nutrition and Microbiology. The longterm aim of the programme is to produce the next generation of clinical academics.

Lay abstract: No Data Entered

Research activity codes: 5.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Clinical PhD programme in Global Health Research
Funder: Wellcome Trust

Abstract: Our goal is to train a cohort of academically outstanding clinicians committed to research careers focussing on the health problems of low and middle income countries, providing them with the skills and mentorship they need to become independent clinician scientists and future academic leaders. Our programme will be based in the Wellcome Trust Bloomsbury Centre for Global Health Research, a partnership between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, University College London, Queen Mary University of London, Kings College London and St George’s, University of London established in 1995, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Centre for Global Health Research at Brighton and Sussex Medical School. Our 99 potential supervisors cover the academic disciplines needed for global health research and a wide variety of clinical specialties. We are applying for 5 fellowships a year, and will focus on six themes in which our partner institutions have a strong track record of global health research and a history of successful collaboration: HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria; neglected tropical diseases; maternal and child health; mental health; antimicrobial resistance; and non-communicable diseases. Our partner institutions have committed a total of more than £1 million to support the programme and provide additional fellowships.

Lay abstract: No Data Entered

Research activity codes: 2.6 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (AETIOLOGY)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Centre for Neglected Tropical Diseases Drug Discovery
Funder: Wellcome Trust

Abstract: The vision for the Centre is to help tackle the urgent unmet medical need and lack of drug discovery research for Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) by creating the hub for NTD drug discovery and being the collaborator of choice for academics, Pharma and Product Development Partnerships (PDPs) in the translation of discovery science into drug candidates. The success of this vision will be evidenced by increased integration, efficiency and effectiveness of the discovery science, drug discovery and mode-of-action teams in Dundee, providing: Accelerated delivery of NTD drug candidates for our PDP partners, with an initial focus on visceral leishmaniasis and Chagas' disease. Improved paradigms for carrying out NTD drug discovery, including improved understanding of PKPD relationships and more predictive disease models. Improved methodology to determine drug modes of action and resistance mechanisms. Increased exploitation of novel drug targets through structure based drug discovery, involving collaborators worldwide. Training and support for international scientists in the theory and practice of NTD drug discovery. Increased public engagement and awareness of the impact of, and need for, new medicines for NTDs and a greater understanding of the nature and importance of drug discovery.

Lay abstract: No Data Entered

Research activity codes: 5.1 PHARMACEUTICALS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Coronavirus Discourses: Linguistic Evidence For Effective Public Health Messaging
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council

Abstract: Developed in partnership with Public Health England, Public Health Wales and NHS Education for Scotland, this bid addresses key challenges that the coronavirus pandemic presents in relation to understanding the flow and impact of public health messages as reflected in public and private discourses. Our collaborators above who are charged with constructing effective public health messages have identified two particular challenges: messaging around geographical borders (e.g. between England and Wales, and in local lockdowns) and messaging aimed at BAME populations. These areas will be the focus of our research, and we will deliver benefits to our collaborators in the form of initial analytical results and discussion from month 2 onwards. As human behaviour is shaped by the reception and production of discourse, and by the reasoning about different sources of information, we propose a new approach to track the trajectories of public health messages once they are released to the public. Moving beyond corpus linguistic approaches that focus on language production, we will investigate the complex relationship between the production and the reception of discourses relating to specific types of public health messages, focusing on linguistic patterns (in particular modality and stance markers). Drawing on our track record in the construction and analysis of heterogenous corpora and our ongoing work on privacy enhancing technologies, we propose to carry out the first large scale analysis of the trajectories of public health messages relating to the coronavirus pandemic in the UK.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Vaccines Without Refridgeration
Funder: Innovate UK

Abstract: Vaccines are known to be the most effective medical innovation in human history, credited with saving over 10 million lives since 1962\. The significant challenge with vaccines however is that they have to be kept refrigerated, between 2-8°C, at all times during their storage and transport, requiring a global infrastructure of refrigeration equipment known as the cold chain. This system is extremely costly to operate and prone to regular failures, the NHS reports almost 300,000 vaccines doses are wasted each year due to cold chain failures. Globally 1.5 million infants die each year from vaccine-preventable diseases, mainly in hot climates and low-middle income countries. Not only is this an issue with human vaccine distribution, but also with animal vaccines used in farming. In the UK, the British Veterinary Association estimates that only 27 % of vaccines administered by farmers are stored according to manufacturer guidelines. EnsiliTech has developed a novel technology to preserve vaccines, without the need for fridges and freezers at any point in their storage and distribution, called ensilication. The technology is highly scalable, using inexpensive materials and processes, making it easy to apply post-production. Ensilication aims to be applicable to most vaccines, allowing high degrees of protection against extremely low and high temperatures, high humidity, sunlight and acidity. The technology has been tested on a range of different biomolecules, ensuring that the vaccines will be fully protected and that there is no loss of efficacy in the protected vaccines. Over the course of the project, EnsiliTech will apply ensilication technology to relevant real world vaccines for diseases endemic to global animal populations. These are orally administered vaccines, reducing the use of needles and allowing more efficient vaccine administration and patient compliance. A thermally-stable oral tablet vaccine would revolutionise both the animal and human vaccine sectors, creating a new gold standard for vaccine preservation.


Research activity codes: 3.4 VACCINES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Healing the Gap in Wound Technology
Funder: Innovate UK

Abstract: There is an urgent need for innovate products in the chronic wound care market due to an increasing prevalence of chronic wounds and a lack of confidence in existing technologies. There were an estimated 3.8 million patients with a wound managed by the NHS in 2017/18 with an increase in prevalence of 71% between 2012/13 and 2017/18\. There are several antibiofilm wound treatments on the market however the dressing market is dominated by silver technology. Clinicians and nurses on the front line do not have time to appropriately manage chronic wounds which prolongs their healing, increasing the burden on health care systems. Key stakeholders believe there are huge opportunities to disrupt this market. Hybrisan are established experts in antimicrobial and antibiofilm technology, however require further resource to introduce this technology into the chronic wound sector. There is an opportunity to disrupt a market dominated by silver. During this project Hybrisan will develop their independently proven antibiofilm and antimicrobial technology into a functional nanofibre for the chronic wound care market for use with existing wound dressing platforms.


Research activity codes: 5.3 MEDICAL DEVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: COVID19 AUTONOMOUS DELIVERY VEHICLES (C19-ADVs)
Funder: Innovate UK

Abstract: Vulnerable people including elderly and ill people must shield during Covid-19\. The Mayor of Mablethorpe has identified this town as at especially high risk due to its demography as a retirement location and its current construction of a dedicated geriatric medical campus which will concentrate elderly people and their carers living and working on site. To reduce human contacts with shielding people in Mablethorpe's current social housing and care streets and its future medical campus, and possible infections during delivery of medicines and goods, this project will set up an autonomous vehicle for last mile delivery to their doors. Autonomous, electric, last-mile delivery vehicles promise to improve the rapid and low cost movement of standard-sized packages between shops, homes, restaurants, public transport and car park nodes. If Vehicles Ltd currently designs and manufacturers similar vehicles for manual rather than automated control, but in this project will convert them to autonomous vehicles with the help of Robotics experts from the University of Lincoln. Rather they rely on advanced artificial intelligence, we will install simple tried and tested radio localisation devices in the environment, which provide immediate ground truth locations, usually used for testing against research AI methods. An important aspect of the project will investigate the safety, legal and security practicalities for using these autonomous electric vehicles in Mablethorpe in the time frame of the pandemic and our team includes experienced local and national government consultants and the support of Mablethorpe Council to ensure this.


Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Super-resolution, low cost optical bio-nanoscope for direct virus imaging
Funder: Innovate UK

Abstract: Coronaviruses are threatening the lives of human being worldwide. Understanding of coronaviruse interactions with cells and drugs is essential for the development of treatments and prevention of future pandemics. LIG Nanowise Ltd will develop a new super-resolution, low cost optical microscope at 50 nm direct optical resolution that can see live viruses including coronavirus (60-140 nm in size) and their interactions with cells and drugs to accelerate drug discovery and diagnosis of diseases. Current electron microscopes and other optical microscopes cannot visualise live viruses due to the requirement for vacuum operation or the injection of fluorescent materials into the viruses or low optical resolution (a theoretical resolution limit of 200 nm for standard optical microscopes).


Research activity codes: 1.4 METHODOLOGIES AND MEASUREMENTS;3.4 VACCINES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Neucruit: Creating a platform to optimise participant recruitment for active COVID-19 vaccine trials, and future clinical and research trials.
Funder: Innovate UK

Abstract: Clinical research trials protect patients from experimental medical research and ensure that new vaccinations are safe and effective before they're scaled. On average, researchers spend 30% of R&D securing participant recruitment. When the criteria for participation is complex, it can take up to 7 months to find participants (CRM International-2011). Over 86% of clinical research is delayed by up to 6-months due to delays in participant recruitment, translating into even longer delays for patients who need life-saving treatments (Applied Clinical Trials-2004). To understand the nature, effects and suppression of COVID-19, extensive trials are needed. Trials are likely to include vaccinations and asymptomatic patient testing to understand how the disease is spread. There are approximately 150 COVID-19 vaccination trials awaiting testing, requiring on average 650 participants per trial (Harden-2018). Research facilities around the world are attempting to urgently fast-track a vaccine. Access to a network of pre-screened participants will make vaccinations a reality, quickly. Neucruit's innovation combines an optimised platform for managing recruitment of clinical trials, with intelligent algorithms for pre-selection and matching using AI. Neucruit will optimise participant recruitment via a web-based platform, which matchmakes clinical researchers with a large population of patients, and digitalises contact time for risk reduction. In this project we will develop the Neucruit platform to MVP, onboard a minimum 9,000 participants and test our software in three live Phase III COVID-19 vaccination trials.


Research activity codes: 3.4 VACCINES;6.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT EVALUATION)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Golem: A disruptive platform to access and interactively analyse genetic data
Funder: Innovate UK

Abstract: Being able to extract useful information from genetic and health data is a key challenge for the next decade. Human genomic data is doubling in size every seven months and may soon exceed other Big Data generators such as astronomy, YouTube and Twitter. Although this data is revolutionising medicine and development of new therapeutics and diagnostics, reaching the full potential of this substantial investment relies on our ability to unlock clinically actionable knowledge from it. The key to this is ensuring data access and analysis capabilities are democratised over a range of researchers and institutions with different capabilities, whilst ensuring individual level data is kept safe. However, obstacles to this remain, owing to the data's unprecedented size, complexity, and restricted access (relating to privacy concerns, economic interests, research limitations, and multi-institutional data fragmentation). This project will lead to the development of a disruptive commercial platform changing how data is accessed and how value is extracted from it. This will have impacts in several areas, including: * Increasing efficiency of drug development. * Reducing NHS expenditure, by reducing drug side effects and overall improvement of personalised medicine. * Increasing productivity of high tech jobs. * Overall improvement of academic research in genetics. Including helping to understand why COVID-19 differently impacts different people. * Reducing carbon footprint in big datacenters through the use of much more efficient computing algorithms. * Empowering the individuals to control what happens with their data. If successful, this project will contribute to the UK's ambitions of leading the field of genetics and creating the right fabric for developing an important, high-tech industry for the next decade. This is a highly scalable project targeting a rapidly growing international market at the very important intersection between computer science, genetic and epidemiological data analysis, and human health. It is also timely, addressing an important challenge that is within the government four Grand Challenges as well as many objectives highlighted in the Innovate UK Horizons Tool. Overall, if successful in our ambitions, we could significantly contribute to the UK's aspirations as a relevant player offering solutions for the next decade's forthcoming challenges whilst strengthening and supporting GDP, develop and attract international talent, and globally create high quality jobs.


Research activity codes: 2.5 RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGIES (AETIOLOGY)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: Optimising collaborations and reducing inequalities of Early Childhood Intervention in post-Covid-19 South Africa
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) is widely recognised as key for positive development, and health but also for economic growth, particularly when it abides to the principle of interdisciplinary collaboration. In South Africa (SA), a developing country with nearly 7 million children under 6, of which two thirds live in economically vulnerable households, ECI often falls short of true partnerships between sectors (health, education and the community of care), with implications on its effectiveness. With the Covid-19 outbreak these challenges are even greater. This project aims to contribute to optimise effectiveness and equality of collaborations in ECI in SA, considering new challenges brought by the Covid-19 outbreak. A nation-wide survey will be conducted, followed by focus groups and interviews with key ECI stakeholders (in education, health and community). ECI strategies for interdisciplinary collaboration will be tailored to these stakeholders’ needs and, supported by digital multimedia production, made accessible to all.


Research activity codes: 7.3 MANAGEMENT AND DECISION MAKING;8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: After action review to safeguard health and well-being of adolescents learning online during school closures in the response to COVID-19 pandemic: A pilot project in China to inform education policy and programme
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across the world have switched to online education as early as February 2020 to contain the spread of the disease. While schools in China gradually have reopened since April, Beijing had to close schools again in June due a resurgence of cases. Periodic school closing has become an important containment strategy until effective treatment and/or vaccination for COVID-19 becomes available. This study aims to 1) identify and investigate critical issues around health and well-being of adolescents confronted with abrupt changes in teaching delivery and learning environment, and 2) develop an After Action Review for lessons learned and mitigation strategies. Employing the ‘Facilitated Look Backs’, a quality improvement method validated in previous epidemics, this pilot project will involve schools and stakeholders in Beijing and Wuhan to generate evidence to inform a wider rollout across China and to other countries and for future epidemic responses.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS;8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION
Title: COVID-19 and the South Asian state: a cross-national and cross-regional comparison
Funder: The British Academy

Abstract: This project probes to understand and analyse how ‘the state’ in South Asia addresses labour rights and health provision of workers during and in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It provides a cross-country and cross-regional comparison between India (Delhi, Kerala) and Sri Lanka (Colombo, Jaffna). It seeks to map variations in state responses to workers’ employment issues and health concerns and relates these to differences in state structure (unitary-federal), regime type (militarisation, autocratic democracy), the strength and mobilisation capacity of workers and the nature of party-political competition. The project will engage with academic research partners in India and Sri Lanka, who will take a lead role with us in collecting and analysing documents and visuals, conducting qualitative research, co-authoring and contributing to dissemination. The project will generate articles, policy briefs, virtual workshops and serve as a pilot for an expanded research grant application involving more studies from South Asia.


Research activity codes: 8.1 ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF SERVICES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE;INFECTION