The BIOSPEC project seeks to address opportunities in biomedical sensing, made possible through recent developments in Raman spectroscopy. M Squared Lasers have licensed and developed intellectual property in the area of Wavelength Modulated Raman Spectroscopy (WMRS), a highly sensitive subset of Raman spectroscopy, with a myriad of potential application areas. The BIOSPEC project provided an opportunity to advance our internal capabilities in terms of functional hardware and engineer training to help address these opportunities.
Some examples of these targeted application areas include: discriminating between healthy and cancerous tissues; identifying the presence of inflammation and infection; and measuring drug concentrations in biological fluids for therapeutic drug monitoring applications. These areas represent three key areas in which the proposed technology can generate a tangible societal benefit. The long term pathway to clinical deployment would enable cost reduction in the provision of healthcare through efficient diagnosis and the optimisation of therapeutic delivery. In addition, patient outcomes should benefit from improved capabilities. There are also non-medical applications that can realise economic and societal benefits such as on-line beverage quality control, to detect counterfeit or contaminated produce.
The overall objectives of the BIOSPEC project were to: gain specialist skilled labour in biological analysis and photonics development; develop recently acquired IP in WMRS into a pre-prototype; Demonstrate and test WMRS system on the analysis of biological fluids; advance the TRL of WMRS towards commercialisation and to be attractive for further funding; overcome the barriers to recruiting the best talent by applying EU wide rather than nationally; ensure market needs are catered for by a growing skilled workforce.
