Institute of Global Health Innovation

By guest blogger and Imperial alumnus Margaux Lesaffre

Stroke is the silent killer; there are no clear symptoms until people realise they can’t talk, move or even swallow. Annually, over 5 million deaths worldwide are caused by strokes, ranking this disease in the first ten leading cause of deaths.  In developed countries, the incidence of stroke is dropping, but the outcome is still severe with some stroke victims left permanently disabled.

So what’s the way forward?

University researchers have developed remarkable innovations that could deliver significantly more reliable diagnostics and treatment. This blog looks at different ways university research can tackle this insidious disease.

Focus on Innovative Rehabilitation

When a blood vessel bursts in the brain, or when a blockage forms, parts of the brain may stop receiving oxygen. This can cause brain cells to die. In the regions affected by cell death, the ability to control primary body functions, including speech and muscle control, can be lost.

The aftermath of a stroke depends on which part of the brain is affected and the extent of damage. This is why a stroke is a time-critical emergency. Even if better prevention can ultimately reduce the incidence of strokes, it cannot be completely eliminated. With the consequences of this disease being so severe, a number of academic researchers are focusing their energy on stroke rehabilitation. (more…)

Read Tackling Stroke with University Innovation in full

By Student Challenges Competition runner up Nicolas Kylilis

Nicolas won the £2,500 prize money last year for his inventive idea for a new platform technology called DaPHNI for developing point-of-care medical diagnostic devices. The DaPHNI platform has the potential to have a large, multifaceted positive impact on global health both in developed countries, at healthcare centres, or as home diagnostic kits, as well as in developing countries.

The problem

In the past few decades, innovations in biotechnology have brought to the market small portable and affordable medical diagnostic devices that people can use to monitor their health, the so-called biosensors. Some examples of biosensor devices such as the pregnancy test strip and the blood glucose meter are widely known and used by the public.

Biosensor devices work by detecting a biomarker molecule in a patient’s sample (blood, urine etc.) that corresponds to a medical condition and reports the results to the user of the device. For example, the blood glucose meter measures the concentration of glucose – the biomarker – in a diabetic patient’s blood to help him plan meals and medication. This technology allows for diagnostic testing to take place at the comfort of patient’s home and resulted in the dramatic rise in the standard of care for diabetic patients.

Healthcare reforms being pursued by many western countries focus on providing better and more convenient access to healthcare for all patients. This, in combination with an increased interest on a more patient-centric healthcare system creates the incentives for the development of more biosensor tests to diagnose even more medical conditions. However, for the medical conditions where the diagnostic need is the greatest – an example being cancer prognosis or after-treatment monitoring – current biosensor technology is inadequate. This is because such medical conditions have complex diagnostic profiles of many biomarker signatures that current biosensor technology proves inadequate. As a result, diagnosis can only take place in hospitals and research centers with sophisticated equipment and associated with large costs and thus not available to many. (more…)

Read Innovations in biotechnology in full

John Chetwood, winner of  the 2012 IGHI Student Challenges Competition tells us how he has put the £2000 prize money to good use.

Detecting a Silent Cancer

With the hepatologists at Imperial College London, I had been in rural Thailand investigating urinary biomarkers of ‘cholangiocarcinoma’ or simply put, cancer of the bile ducts. Though cholangiocarcinoma is thankfully rare in developed countries, it is showing worrying increases in incidence, and has shown little improvement in survival over the last 15 years.  There is still little hope of cure unless detected early and nearly everyone who develops this cancer will die from it. This situation is particularly bleak when you consider parts of rural South-East Asia where mainly due to parasitic infection the incidence surpasses 300/100,000, yet there are significant limitations on any kind of investigation or treatment.

In my final year as a medical student at Imperial College, my efforts were directed towards developing a diagnostic and screening urinary dipstick (similar to the kind currently used for pregnancy) which would lead to an accurate, cost-effective, transportable, non-perishable, and culturally permissible way to screen for this cancer in these communities. Early diagnosis of this cancer offers the only realistic chance of cure and with better understanding of how this cancer develops there was also the tangible possibility of new and better treatments. (more…)

Read Next Generation: Global Health Innovators in full