Cancer Research Technology (CRT) has signed an agreement that allows The Technology Partnership (TTP) to license and develop its Cymap lens-free imaging equipment.
Cymap can detect a range of particle types in a solution and can be used in cost-effective medical diagnostic systems in hospitals, doctors' surgeries and research laboratories to detect, quantify and analyse medical samples such as blood or bacteria.
Cymap works by illuminating items, such as cells or pathogens, in a sample.
This creates light diffraction and interference patterns that can be recorded by a charge-coupled device (CCD), a type of digital camera, and then analysed with computer algorithms.
This allows scientists to count the number of items in a sample and monitor changes such as location, movement and division of cells.
This information helps scientists understand cell division and cell movement, which are important in processes such as wound healing and in diseases such as cancer.
Cymap may be developed to monitor bacterial contamination, the presence of other pathogens, or to count red and white blood cells.
Cymap can be easily miniaturised and integrated with microfluidic systems.
Professor Borivoj Vojnovic, one of Cymap's inventors, from the Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, University of Oxford, (Girob) said: 'This new generation of imaging technology will hopefully be much smaller, cheaper and easier to use than the existing alternatives which are usually only available to scientists and pathologists in larger well-equipped bioscience laboratories.
'We envisage Cymap working well as a hand-held device which should make the equipment accessible and affordable for more people working in cancer and other health-related disciplines across the world.' The technology was developed by members of the Optical Biochips Consortium, at Girob, Cardiff University and Bangor University.
This consortium was backed by funding from Research Councils UK, which includes the Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council and the Engineering Physical Sciences Research Council.
The intellectual property arising from this laboratory-based research has been assigned to CRT, which has filed a patent to protect the academic work.
TTP will seek other commercial partners to develop and bring to market a range of applications based on Cymap, either by direct licensing arrangements or through co-development partnerships.
CRT and TTP will share the revenues from any future development and sales.
