Analyst Blog

Starting with a dark morning (due to being up at 4:00 am) I got to Manchester airport to meet up with my colleagues Dr Alex Henderson and Profs Roy Goodacre and Peter Gardner. A very quick and easy flight over to Dublin and we were at the mercy of our excellent host Prof. Hugh Byrne at the FOCAS Research Institute, Dublin Institute of Technology. The reason we were all here was the 2^nd quarterly meeting of the Clinical Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy Network (www.clirspec.org) funded by an EPSRC Network Grant.

I was waiting for a train on a cold and rainy Friday morning in February at Preston train station (this will be a shock for those that know the Preston climate as it is actually subtropical) and tweeting from @ChemistryBaker to my colleagues @RoyGoodacre and @AlexHenderson00 about the upcoming kick off meeting of the Clinical Infrared and Raman Spectroscopy network. Analyst (@analystrsc) picked this tweet up and through a few tweets back and forth agreed to host a blog on the subject and here it is; to show a different side of research and the way a fledgling network starts and, hopefully, becomes successful. Success for us is closely linked to a clinical impact that would have a massive positive effect on many many people’s lives.

The UK is a world leader in the field of vibrational biomedical spectroscopy with excellent research being performed by many groups based in our academic and governmental research systems. Diagnostic and prognostic tools based on these technologies have the potential to revolutionise our clinical systems leading to improved patient outcome, a more efficient healthcare service and significant economic savings. However, despite these strong reasons and the research that has occurred to date, this technology has not truly made the jump into the clinic. There was a need to bring many researchers, clinicians and industrialists together in order to provide a critical mass that will overcome these clinical implementation barriers.

It was for these reasons, that in 2012, several of us got together to speak about the possibility of developing a bid for an EPSRC network grant. Importantly network grants provide no money for research projects rather funding to enable collaborative multidisciplinary meetings targeted to tackle problems and drive a field forwards. Luckily EPSRC agreed (thank you EPSRC) that our bid, plan and field deserved funding and the EPSRC Clinical Infrared and Raman SPECtroscopy (CLIRSPEC) network was set up.

Even though the meeting that February day was long and actually quite tiring it was also fun and welcoming. Our field is known to be a supportive field. Essentially the aims of the meeting was to get people together to discuss and finalise our plans to overcome the challenges we identified, agree how we assess bids to the training fund for PhDs and PDRAs, conference locations and summer school locations.  The main aim was to ask already overworked people to do more work for free, which thankfully they agreed to.

The work of the network will be achieved through six working parties that aim to overcome the barriers that challenge our field:

1)   To develop our understanding of the interaction of light with clinical samples

2)   To develop internationally recognized protocols for the preparation of cells, tissue and biofluids for clinical spectroscopy

3)   To provide evidence of the power of spectroscopy for use in the clinical arena

4)   To determine the requirements of instrumentation suitable for use in the clinic

5)   To develop strategies for pre-processing and statistical analysis in clinical spectroscopy

6)   To develop inter-group data sharing protocols and portal

I would like to use this first blog to ask if there are any clinicians, scientists or industrialists out there who feel they can contribute to the cause. We currently have international and national partners and would welcome more. If you feel you can contribute then please visit our website. We do not want to be a closed shop but rather harness the power of many to achieve our aims.

Until the next time…

Please find links to recent papers below that describe the research currently on-going in the field to demonstrate the application of spectroscopy to the clinical environment as well as tackling the current research challenges.

The inherent problem of transflection-mode infrared spectroscopic microscopy and the ramifications for biomedical single point and imaging applications