Hygiene in homecare, paper and marine industries is increasingly challenging. Home, industrial, hospital and marine surfaces are constantly challenged by microbial contamination. Current anti-microbials such as metals and quats present environmental and toxicological risks, are of limited efficacy on biofilms, whilst presenting a risk of increasing microbial resistance. Bioderived lactams disrupt quorum sensing during biofilm growth and development apparently without driving resistance. Recent feasibility work demonstrated the potential of lactams as anti-biofilm coatings on textiles (TSB132177). To date, their efficacy as active ingredients in liquid products is limited due to bioavailability and formulation hurdles. Using diverse application techniques during manufacture and finishing, lead analogues will be localised on wipes, paper, marine, and other industrial surfaces. The project will build a business case and recommend efficient incorporation chemistry and process route for cross-industry surface biofilm disruption based on cost, efficacy and robustness. Successful demonstration of application will fast track lactam commercialisation allowing market share and revenue gains for industrial partners and IP and publication monetisation for ROs.

This project will evaluate the feasibility of a rapid, specific and cheap test for human entric viruses. We will apply our novel patented technology that is able to detect and distinguish specific DNA/RNA sequences as the basis for the test. This will enable viral detection and serotyping, and we suggest that our assay would overcome many of the limitations of current tests. In particular DestiNA technology has been used in the error-free detection of human SNPs in cystic fibrosis, and here we would apply it to rapidly detect and serotype viruses in patient samples. We will design and synthesise probes and define and optimise our limit of detection in an ELISA-like assay. The specificty of our assay will be tested with sythetic viral sequences followed by the use of real clinical samples. A successful outcome will demonstrate the performance of the assay and could be used to develop it on several other platforms to enable both point of care and enviromental testing.

To develop quantitative assays using biofilm technology.