"Recent advances in cell therapy and immunotherapy are changing the face of modern medicine. In particular a new type of treatment -- CAR-T therapy, made from the patient's own immune cells -- is offering new hope to cancer patients. The drawback of these treatments is that they are extraordinarily expensive to produce using current methods and hence are unaffordable to public healthcare systems. Automation is key to making cell therapy manufacturing more efficient and more affordable. One factor holding back progress in this area is that current technologies for process control and monitoring are either inadequte or involve a high level of manual input. The aim of this project is to develop a new type of in-line measurement system that uses the power of digital holographic microscopy to image cells in 3D directly within a bioreactor system. Machine learning software will then interpret the images to generate a rich set of measurements that can be used to optimise the speed and quality of the process in real time. Developing this technology will give UK startups Oxford MEStar and See-Through Scientific a world-beating competitive edge in the rapidly growing CAR-T manufacturing market."

In the UK, cancer is the second most common cause of death and is the cause of death that is most costly to the economy. Over 90% of deaths follow metastasis, where secondary tumours are established in the body. Unfortunately, symptoms are usually experienced after metastasis, by which time treatments are often ineffective. We have designed a technology to identify and enrich ultra-rare tumour cells from a blood sample, before secondary tumours are established. This will enable earlier and better-informed clinical decisions, and research into more effective treatments. Our novel design is distributable and affordable such that the benefits will be accessible to a large proportion of society.