Public Funding for Dimension Biotechnologies Limited

The health of the vascular system -- the highway of veins and arteries that connect every part of the human body -- is critical for the rest of the body to function properly. Consequently, vascular system damage is key to the progression of many of the world's most prevalent and deadly diseases, including heart disease, stroke and septic shock. A large part of the reason that these diseases are so devastating, is a lack of tools for monitoring and treating vascular system health, especially the small (micro-)vessels that surround our tissues and make up the vast majority (99%) of the vascular tree. Our current strategies largely focus on monitoring and treating risk factors of macro-vascular disease (e.g., blood pressure and cholesterol levels) rather than targeting vascular damage at a cellular level. These approaches, while an important part of current healthcare practices, are limited in their utility to properly assess and appropriately treat patients. For this, we need to move beyond risk factor management and target the structural changes that occur in the micro-vascular system itself. The endothelial glycocalyx -- a gel-like layer that coats the wall of the entire vascular system -- is the key to this gap. This structure is fundamental to vascular function and its damage is a hallmark of vascular damage during diseases like sepsis, heart disease, stroke, pre-eclampsia, and chronic kidney disease. However, the only current method of directly measuring this layer is biopsy and electron or fluorescence microscopy, which is invasive, slow, and expensive, rendering it useless in a clinical setting. Consequently, no drugs targeting the glycocalyx have been developed. Detecting and manipulating the glycocalyx is a major unmet technological challenge with potentially wide-reaching applications in vascular system monitoring, treatment and drug-targeting. We have developed an innovative solution to this challenge that enables us not only to measure the glycocalyx using a simple blood sample, but also deliver components of the glycocalyx to the vascular wall, enabling us to engineer its composition and resultant function. We have founded Dimension Biotechnologies to translate these findings into diagnostic and therapeutic products targeting the endothelial glycocalyx. This project will focus on delivering a technical and commercial assessment of our glycocalyx engineering technology and the potential markets it can unlock.