Developing research at the convergence of the life, clinical, engineering and physical sciences is the key focus of the CRUK Convergence Science Centre. The Centre supports emerging ideas with its own seed funding scheme: the Development Fund. Below are listed all projects that are or were supported by the Centre (including by the former Imperial Centre).

2024

Poly-pharmacological chip (PPC) to evaluate response to anticancer drugs in tumours ex-vivo - Dr Sam Au, Dr Adam Celiz (Imperial, Bioengineering), Dr Tom Lund, and Professor Udai Banerji (ICR, Cancer Therapeutics)

New Smart Bioresorbable Materials and Devices for Safer Minimally Invasive Tumour Ablation Procedures - Dr Edward Johnston (ICR, Royal Marsden Hospital) and Dr Emiliano Bilotti (Imperial, Aeronautics)

Towards early-stage stomach cancer detection with full-waveform inversion - Dr Sung Pil Hong (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Joshua Shur (ICR, Royal Marsden Hospital), Dr Oscar Calderon Agudo (Imperial, Earth Science & Engineering)

AI-driven digital pathology for cancer risk prediction in inflammatory bowel disease - Dr Ailsa Hart (Imperial Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction), Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez and Professor Trevor Graham (ICR, Molecular Pathology)

Ultrasound-stimulated microbubbles for the radiosensitisation of tumours - Dr Graeme Birdsey (Imperial, National Heart & Lung Institute), Dr Erik Wennerberg and Dr Emma Harris (ICR, Radiotherapy and Imaging)

2023

Bioimpedance for tissue Recognition with Artificial Intelligence in Neuroblastoma (BRAIN), Joint call with Imperial MedTechONE - Steven Wong, Mr Jinendra Ekanayake, and Professor Timothy Constandinou (Imperial, Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
Exhaled breath analysis for cancer therapy monitoring: Proof of Concept in the SOLAR trial, Joint call with Imperial MedTechONE - Dr Bibek Das and Mr Stefan Antonowicz (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)
Development of an innovative metabolomics-based platform to enhance the surgical treatment of cervical precancer and cancer, Joint call with Imperial MedTechONE - Dr Maria Paraskevaidi and Professor Maria Kyrgiou (Imperial, Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction)
Plasmonic Enhanced Platform for Deep Tissue Imaging in the Near Infrared Biological Transparency Window, Joint call with Imperial MedTechONE - Dr Koen Evers and Professor Fang Xie (Imperial, Materials)
A study to investigate the use of wearable technology in upper limb rehabilitation post breast and axillary surgery, Joint call with Imperial MedTechONE - Ahmed Latif and Mr Daniel Leff (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)
Investigating cell plasticity via spatiotemporal epigenetic perturbation - Professor Luca Magnani (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer) & Dr Marco Di Antonio (Imperial, Chemistry)
Delivering precision medicine and tailored cancer treatments through high-throughput personalised in vitro metabolomics - Dr Ben O'Leary and Dr Antonio Rullan (ICR & Royal Marsden Hospital, Breast Cancer Research and Radiotherapy & Imaging), & Professor Zoltan Takats, Dr Stefania Maneta-Stavrakaki and Mr James Higginson (Imperial, Metabolism, Digestion & Reproduction).
Testing of a disruptive miniaturised micro-probe for treatment monitoring in pancreatic cancer - Dr Burak Temelkuran (Imperial, Metabolism, Digestion & Reproduction), Dr Anguraj Sadanandam (ICR, Molecular Pathology), Dr Salzitsa Anastasova (Imperial, Hamlyn Centre) & Mr Mikael H Sodergren (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer).

2021

Development of Organoid-Microdevice Bank for Optimised Organoid Derivation & Culture - Dr Sam Au (Imperial, Bioengineering), Dr Paul Huang (ICR, Molecular Pathology), Dr Benjamin Schuman (Imperial, Chemistry), Dr Amanda Swain (ICR, Cancer Biology) & Dr Marco Gerlinger (Royal Marsden Hospital).
Development of a microfluidics platform to 3D print tumour-specific Extra-Cellular Matrices to improve derivation rates of High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer patient-derived organoids - Dr Paula Cunnea (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Professor Manuel Salto-Tellez (ICR, Molecular Pathology), Professor Christina Fotopoulou (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Mark Friddin (Imperial, DSDE), Dr Ali Mohammed (Imperial, DSDE), & Dr Connor Myant (Imperial, DSDE).
ENIGMA: deciphering intracellular communication to improve derivation of organoid models - Professor Nicola Valeri (ICR, Molecular Pathology), Professor Luca Magnani (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Professor Molly Stevens (Imperial, Materials), Professor George Hanna (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Farah Rehman (Imperial, ICHT).
Mechanistic exploration of cell-free tumour DNA (ctDNA) shedding into circulation using microfluidic vascularised organoid-on-chip models - Professor Nicola Valeri (ICR, Molecular Pathology) & Dr Sam Au (Imperial, Bioengineering)

Rapid, low-cost multiplexed Immunofluorescence for histological diagnosis and immune phenotyping - Professor Paul French (Imperial, Physics), Professor Iain McNeish (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer) & Dr Marco Di Antonio (Imperial, Chemistry)

Developing the first in vivo chemical biology tool for hedgehog acyltransferase - Dr Florence Raynaud and Professor Udai Banerji (ICR, Cancer Therapeutics) & Professor Ed Tate (Imperial, Chemistry)
Tumour-targeted delivery of oncolytic adenovirus and subsequent tumour-homing IL-12 delivery - Professor Alan Melcher (ICR, Radiotherapy & Imaging), Dr Jun Ishihara (Imperial, Bioengineering) & Professor Iain McNeish (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)
Development of an Ultrafast Infrared Laser System for High Precision Surgery - Dr Burak Temelkuran and Mr James Higginson (Imperial, Metabolism, Digestion & Reproduction), Dr Robbie Murray (Imperial, Physics)

Interrogating the role of hydrolases on barrier integrity using a human colon cancer-on-Chip model - Dr Rachael Barry (Imperial, Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction) & Professor Ed Tate (Imperial, Chemistry)

2020

Early detection of prostate cancer in high risk men through multiplexed quantification of very low levels of mutant DNA - Professor Rosalind Eeles and Dr Zsofia Kote-Jarai (ICR, Genetics & Epidemiology), Dr John Goertz & Professor Molly Stevens (Imperial, Materials).
Endomicroscopy-guided Molecular Tissue Characterisation and Ablation in Cancer Surgery - Professor George Poulogiannis (ICR, Cancer Biology) & Professor Zoltan Takats (Imperial, Metabolism, Digestion & Reproduction)
Longitudinal monitoring of breast cancer patients during and post-radiotherapy through Nanopore-based Size Profiling of Cell-Free DNA (cfDNA) from Liquid Biopsies - Dr Navita Somaiah (ICR, Radiotherapy & Imaging), Dr Sylvain Ladame and Dr Robert Channon (Imperial, Bioengineering), Professor Joshua Edel & Dr Aleksandar Ivanov (Imperial, Chemistry).

2019

Convergence platform for rapid cell-type specific target deconvolution in patient-derived PDAC organoid high-throughput screens: HHAT as a paradigm - Professor Raj Chopra (ICR, Cancer Therapeutics) & Professor Ed Tate (Imperial, Chemistry)

Application of novel 3D super-resolution ultrasound imaging for radiotherapy response assessment in breast tumours - Professor Mengxing Tang (Imperial, Bioengineering), Dr Navita Somaiah & Dr Matthew Blackledge (ICR, Radiotherapy & Imaging).

Novel semiconducting nanoparticles for photoacoustic monitoring of photoimmunotherapy - Dr Gabriela Kramer-Marek and Professor Jeff Bamber (ICR, Radiotherapy & Imaging) & Professor Molly Stevens (Imperial, Materials).
Nano-Imaging with High Chemical Specificity for Convergence Therapeutics - Professor Chris Phillips (Imperial, Physics) & Professor Chris Bakal (ICR, Cancer Biology)
Super-resolving HCA platform to understand the dynamics of FAK1 in response to Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) immunosuppressive tumor microenvironments (TMEs) - Professor Chris Bakal (ICR, Cancer Biology), Professor Paul French & Professor Chris Dunsby (Imperial, Physics)

Photoimmunotherapy targeting EGFR triggers ICD in glioblastoma cells - Dr Gabriela Kramer-Marek (ICR, Radiotherapy & Imaging) & Professor Marina Kuimova (Imperial, Chemistry)

Exploring Acceleration of 4D MRI Data Processing for Real-Time Adaptive Radiotherapy - Dr Andreas Wetscherek and Professor Uwe Oelfke (ICR, Radiotherapy & Imaging) & Professor Wayne Luk (Imperial, Computing)

Improving care through Soft Robotic Tactile Intervention (SRTI) – Towards a smarter compassionate experience in cancer treatment - Dr Helen McNair (ICR & Royal Marsden Hospital, Radiotherapy & Imaging) & Professor Alison McGregor (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)

Development of a single cell biopsy platform to study dynamic transcriptional changes in cancer - Professor Andrea Sottoriva (ICR, Molecular Pathology), Professor Luca Magnani (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Professor Joshua Edel & Dr Aleksandar Ivanov (Imperial, Chemistry).
AL-PHA biosensors: a low-cost platform for the detection of exosome-associated cancer biomarkers - Professor Paul Freemont (Imperial, Infectious Disease), Dr Richard Kelwick (Imperial, Infectious Disease), Dr Marko Storch (Imperial, Life Sciences)
Unravelling epigenetic targets and synthetic lethality mechanisms by means of light-controlled editing of DNA methylation in cancer cells - Dr Marco Di Antonio (Imperial, Chemistry), Professor Robert Brown (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)

Bespoke Peptide Nucleic Acid Optical Probes for the In Situ Detection of Mutations in Breast Cancer Tumour Sections - Dr Sylvain Ladame (Imperial, Bioengineering), Professor Simak Ali (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Professor Laki Buluwela (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)
Targeting ubiquitin processing in multiple myeloma: novel probes for Ubiquitin Specific Peptidase 30 - Professor Ed Tate (Imperial, Chemistry), Professor Holger Auner (Imperial, Immunology and Inflammation), Dr Milon Mondal (Imperial, Chemistry)

2018

Surveillance for individuals at high-risk of colorectal cancer: Phase 1 - Developing a national database of Lynch Syndrome patients as a model to establish an effective surveillance strategy for high-risk groups - Professor Amanda Cross (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Kevin Monahan (Imperial, Medicine)
Unlocking the KLK activome in epithelial ovarian cancer: biomarker discovery and target validation - Professor Ed Tate (Imperial, Chemistry), Professor Iain McNeish (Imperial, Surgery and Cancer), Dr Scott Lovell (Imperial, Chemistry)
Polymersome formulations for effective drug delivery to brain tumours - Professor Alex Porter (Imperial, Materials), Dr Nelofer Syed (Imperial, Brain Sciences), Professor Theoni Georgiou (Imperial, Materials)
Natural Killer (NK) cell immunotherapy for ovarian cancer - Professor Hugh Brady (Imperial, Life Sciences), Professor Matt Fuchter (Imperial, Chemistry), Professor Iain McNeish (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer).
Dissection of Chemotherapy-Induced Tumour Heterogeneity at a Single-Cell Level - Dr Iros Barozzi (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Sung Pil Hong (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer)
MR Fingerprinting Brain Tumours–A Pilot Study - Dr Matthew Grech-Sollars (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Rebecca Quest (Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust), Dr Kyriakos Lobotesis (Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust), Dr Neal Bangerter (Imperial, Bioengineering)

Opening a new window into the interplay between tumour metabolism, PARP biology and therapy response via metabolic flux analysis and a novel chemical proteomics workflow - Professor Hector Keun (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Peter DiMaggio (Imperial, Chemical Engineering)

2017

Targeting hypoxia to improve delivery of tumour targeting antibodies in pancreatic cancer - Dr Vessela Vassileva (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Professor Eric Aboagye (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Kathrin Heinzmann (Imperial, Surgery & Cancer), Dr Ali Ashek (Imperial, Medicine) & Dr Yean Chooi (Imperial, Bioengineering)
Investigating population dynamics and lineage hierarchy relationships in leukaemic blasts with distinct proliferative and immunomodulatory profiles in vivo: the contribution of leukaemia heterogeneity to disease propagation - Dr Constandina Pospori (Imperial, Life Sciences), Professor Cristina Lo Celso (Imperial, Life Sciences), Professor Mauricio Barahona (Imperial, Mathematics)