Distinguished Visitor's Lecture: Developing Diagnostics for the Developing World
Date: 5th March 2012, Monday
Time: 18:30 - 20:00
Venue: Biopolis, Matrix, Level 4, Creation Theatrette
Speaker: Professor Jonathan M Cooper, Professor of Bioelectronics and Bioengineering, University of Glasgow
Organiser: The British High Commission and the UK-Singapore Partners-in-Science programme
RSVP: Mark.Anthony@fco.gov.uk by 2nd March 2012
Abstract
Infectious diseases cause 10 million deaths each year worldwide, accounting for ~60% of all deaths of children aged 5-14. Although these deaths arise primarily through pneumonia, TB, malaria and HIV, there are also the so called “neglected diseases” such as sleeping sickness and bilharzia, which have a devastating impact on rural communities, in sub-Sahara Africa. Here, the demands for a successful Developing World diagnostic are particularly rigorous, requiring low cost instrumentation with low power consumption (there is often no fixed power infrastructure). In many cases, the levels of infection within individuals are also sufficiently low that instruments must show extra-ordinary sensitivity, with measurements being made in blood or saliva. In this talk, a description of these demands will be given, together with a review of some of the solutions that we have developed, which include using new micro- and nanotechnologies to manipulate the fluid sample. In one example, we show how to find a single trypanosome, as the causative agent of sleeping sickness, amongst a background of over 100 million bloods cells.
Autobiography
Professor Jon Cooper, FREng, FRSE holds The Wolfson Chair in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Glasgow. His research group comprises ca. 35 people and involves a broad range of projects in the field of Biomedical Engineering. He has published ca. 200 research papers (H factor 34) with a further 18 books, book chapters and reviews. His research focuses into three major themes, namely Lab-on-a-Chip and Diagnostics; Synthetic Biology; and Fluid Dynamics and Rheology. In the context of Lab-on-a-Chip and Diagnostics, he is particularly interested in developing diagnostics for infectious disease, and works with The Gates Foundation as well as other NGOs in developing assays for tuberculosis, for malaria and for sleeping sickness. These assays are all focussed on very low cost technologies, which can be enabled through low power electronics (including smart phones).
Jon is also founder of Mode Diagnostics (www.modedx.com), producing home diagnostics for bowel cancer and other bathroom electronic tests. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (2004) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2001). He was appointed to the Wolfson Chair in Biomedical Engineering in 2009 and was awarded a Royal Society Merit Award in 2010.