Insigneo Newsletter - June 2023

Welcome to our monthly Insigneo newsletter!  

Our monthly e-newsletter keeps you up to date with events, funding, success stories and information. We hope you will find it useful! 

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust joins Insigneo Institute partnership

We are very happy to announce that Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has joined the Insigneo Institute as a partner alongside our long-term partners Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust.  This new partnership strengthens our ability to work collaboratively with the NHS and contribute to improving health outcomes across the region. We look forward to the opportunity to work with and develop research to contribute to the trust's areas of strategic priority:

• Improving health and wellbeing to support Doncaster and Bassetlaw to improve population outcomes to align to the national benchmark and beyond
• Using data and digital transformation to drive areas of strategic priority that addresses the greatest areas of unmet health need
• Improving patient outcomes through prevention, early diagnosis and better management of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancer
• Improving maternal and child health
• Tackling the health and wellbeing challenges facing our already significant and growing ageing population.

a role which allowed her to collaborate closely with NIHR funding programmes, the Yorkshire and Humber Academic Health Science Network, and the life sciences industry. Dr Fearnside also played a pivotal role in supporting health and social care research involving innovation, working with clinicians, academics, and industry professionals to develop high-quality research and innovation proposals for national, peer-reviewed funding competitions.

Jane’s previous research experience includes serving as a Research Fellow at the University of Sheffield's School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR). During her time at ScHARR, she was involved in evaluating novel diagnostic testing for adrenal insufficiency with the Diabetes and Endocrinology team at Sheffield Teaching and Children's Hospitals. This work resulted in the development of a patient-friendly and cost-effective home salivary test, soon to be implemented across the NHS.

Jane has held significant research positions throughout her career, including roles at the Cancer Clinical Trials Centre at Weston Park Hospital, Sheffield, and The Diabetes Group at The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford. Her D.Phil in Clinical Medicine from the University of Oxford focused on investigating the genetics of diet-induced insulin resistance and diabetes.

Sheffield Hospitals AI technology for heart diagnosis announced as regional winner of Future NHS Award at NHS Parliamentary Awards

Congratulations to Insigneo members Dr Andrew Swift, Dr Samer Alabed and Dr Pete Metherall, and Dr Kavita Karunasagaraar and their colleagues in at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust  who have been announced as regional winners of the prestigious Future NHS Award at the NHS Parliamentary Awards 2023.

This recognition comes in honour of their ground-breaking work in developing an innovative new artificial intelligence cardiac diagnostic tool  that could be a game-changer in future heart disease care.

Dr Andrew Swift, Consultant Cardiothoracic Radiologist at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield said: “Winning the regional award and being shortlisted for the national Future NHS Award is a testament to the visionary work and dedication of the whole team. The new software provides a quick and comprehensive analysis of the heart’s function and has the potential to free up more clinician’s time to focus on direct patient care rather than having to do this analysis.”

Clive Betts, Labour MP for Sheffield South East, who nominated the team for the award said: “Huge congratulations to the team for being shortlisted for this prestigious award. It is a credit to their hard work and innovation in the field and I am so pleased that their work is being recognised.”

Innovative digital health hub aims to transform how patients in South Yorkshire are treated 

A new £4 million digital healthcare hub to tackle healthcare inequalities is set to transform how patients are treated in South Yorkshire.

Congratulations to Professor Tim Chico, Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Insigneo co-director for Healthcare data and AI at the University of Sheffield who will be Director of the new South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub which will drive the development of innovative digital technologies to improve the way diseases are treated and diagnosed.

The South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub, led by the University of Sheffield, will drive the development of innovative digital technologies to improve the way diseases are treated and diagnosed by using cutting-edge research using data from smartphones, wearables, new sensors, combining this with NHS data and using artificial intelligence to develop new clinical tools.

The hub will bring together a range of partners, including the University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, GPs, mental health services, the Sheffield Integrated Care System in South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw, businesses and patient and public groups, to share knowledge, skills and build upon the existing regional strength in developing innovative digital health technologies.

 The Insigneo Institute is a key partner in the hub, providing a critical mass of innovative research spanning healthcare, engineering and science, with links to key regional and national partners including the NIHR Sheffield Biomedical Research Centre, Data Connect, the Centre for Machine Intelligence, the AMRC and the National Centre for Child Health Technology (NCCHT). The Institute’s infrastructure and expertise in digital healthcare research will contribute to a computational platform that brings together NHS, academic and industrial partnerships.

Professor Chico will work alongside University of Sheffield co-investigators Professor Jim Wild, Executive Director of the Insigneo Institute, Professor Richard Clayton, Department of Computer Science, Professor Sanja Dogramadzi, Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, David King, Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), Professor Suzanne Mason, School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), and Professor Christopher McDermott, Department of Neuroscience and with Professor Steve Haake, Dr Marjory Da Costa Abreu, Mrs Lynn Laidlaw and Professor George Peat from Sheffield Hallam University.

Virtual blood vessel technology could improve heart disease care

Patients with heart disease could benefit from less extensive interventions thanks to cutting-edge technology that creates 3D computer models of blood flow through the heart's arteries, according to research presented at the British Cardiovascular Society in Manchester.

When the research team trialled the VIRTUHeart^TM technology with doctors treating heart attack patients, they found that using it would have changed the treatment of more than 20 per cent of patients. In many cases, it would have led to fewer patients undergoing an invasive procedure such as having a stent fitted.

By giving doctors a clearer picture of a patient’s arteries, the research funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF) showed that VIRTUHeart^TM could help more heart patients to get the right treatment for them, free up doctors’ time and better meet demand on heart care services.

The researchers are currently investigating the impact this technology could have if it was used widely in the NHS, including the effect it might have on waiting lists. They hope that it could be in use in as little as three years.

Using MRI for Earlier Detection of Chronic Kidney Disease

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a major public health challenge affecting more than 10% of people. A key challenge for effective treatment is early identification of patients that are at risk of CKD to ensure timely intervention. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has shown a high potential to distinguish biomarkers for CKD, but renal MRI biomarkers are currently underused in research and clinical practice.

COST Action Magnetic Resonance Imaging Biomarkers for Chronic Kidney Disease (PARENCHIMA) aimed to eliminate the main barriers to the broader study, commercial exploitation, and clinical use of renal MRI biomarkers by coordinating research groups across Europe to improve reproducibility and standardization, develop an Open Access toolbox with software and data, and demonstrate the biological validity and clinical value of the technique.

"CKD is something that people tend to live with for a long time," explains Professor  Steven Sourbron Insigneo Member from the University of  Sheffield's Department of Infection, Immunity and Cardiovascular Disease and Chair of PARENCHIMA. "The kidneys can compensate for a certain amount of damage, so when patients show signs of illness it is already harder to fix, and the damage may have become irreversible. Treatment can only slow down the decline."

Prediction of the 3D shape of the L1 vertebral body from adjacent vertebrae

Sensale et al., Medical Image Analysis, 2023.  In this paper published in Medical Image Analysis (top 2% for Imaging, IF 13.83) we have shown that a new in silico approach based on image processing of clinical computed tomography imaging can predict the shape of a vertebra based on the adjacent ones.  This approach has been developed together with our industrial partner ANSYS, using a new computational approach applied to a large database of available CT images. We have shown that this approach is very accurate and can be used in preplanning for surgeries to fix fractures vertebrae, such as vertebroplasty, kyphoplasty or fixation with rod and screws. 

The role of bone metastases on the mechanical competence of human vertebrae

Palanca et al., Bone, 2023.  In this paper we have used a combination of biomechanical testing and high resolution imaging to show for the first time the failure localization in human vertebrae affected by bone metastases.  This approach has shown that the failure is localised at the endplates and depends on the type of lesion and its size.  This study has provided valuable insights towards the definition of better clinical tools for the assessment of the risk of fracture in these complex structures. 

Insigneo Showcase moves to the Wave! 

The Insigneo Showcase is moving to a new venue and we're excited to announce that it will be held at the fantastic new Faculty of Social Sciences building, The Wave.

You can now view the full programme here: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/insigneo/overview/events/insigneo-showcase-2023

The day will feature:

• A plenary talk from Professor Jackie Hunter from BenevolentAI
• Sessions from our five research themes:  Biomaterials / Biomechanics / Cell engineering; Computational modelling in medicine; Biomedical imaging; Smart devices and sensors; and Healthcare data / AI;
• Early Career Researcher presentations – hear about emerging research with perspectives from the next generation of researchers;
• Poster exhibition
• Networking opportunities with industry, funders, academics and clinicians.

If you have not already done so, please register to reserve your place before 30 June 2023.   The event is free of charge and places are available on a first come, first served basis. 

We look forward to welcoming you on 14 July 2023.

SoftMech Soft Tissue workshop 

Insigneo member Professor Richard Clayton from the University of Sheffield's Department of Computer Science gave a keynote talk on 'Sensitivity analysis and calibration of cardiac models using emulators' at the SoftMech Soft Tissue workshop which took place 7-9 June 2023 at the University of Glasgow.

BIOREME Fellowship funding call

The BIOREME network has made some exciting changes to two of their funding calls:

• 18 month Fellowship for ECRs with funding for travel/ conferences. Deadline 6 Oct. 
• Collaboration grants to support researchers in lab visits, travel and conference attendance. Open Call.

​​​​​​​BIOREME is an EPSRC funded Network+ for researchers, industry and patient representatives at the interface of mathematical modelling and respiratory medicine.

Child Health Technology Conference 2023 - call for abstracts

Prof Ivana Barbaric appointed Secretary General of the British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy

Congratulations to Insigneo Research Theme Director for Biomaterials, Biomechanics and Cell Engineering, Professor Ivana Barbaric, from the University of Sheffield's School of Biosciences who was appointed to the post of Secretary General of the British Society for Gene and Cell Therapy in June 2023 for a three-year term.

PhD success

Congratulations to Insigneo members Kirsty Scott and Will Henson from the Department of Mechanical Engineering  who have passed their vivas.

New members

We would like to introduce some of our new members who have joined the Insigneo Institute recently:

He is a developer of the FLAMEGPU software framework, facilitating wider access to complex systems modelling on GPUs.

Previously, he worked with Insigneo member Dr Dawn Walker on the PRIMAGE project, which proposed an open cloud-based platform to support decision-making in the clinical management of two paediatric cancers. In particular, working towards the development of a cell scale model of neuroblastoma to be scaled across multiple GPUs and distributed HPC resources.

Currently, he is working with Fujitsu Research Europe developing a GPU-accelerated transport model.

Since the 2022/2023 academic year he has been the module leader for COM4521/COM6521 that covers parallel programming with OpenMP and CUDA.

Steve Franklin is based in the Netherlands and worked for 30 years as Chief Technologist at Philips, leading tribology and materials engineering research and development for a wide variety of home healthcare and medical devices, consumer products, and manufacturing equipment. From 2017-2023 he led the Contact Dynamics research group at the Advanced Research Centre for Nanolithography in Amsterdam, and was also Senior Principal Architect in Tribology at the company ASML, which is the world leader in machines for the manufacture of semiconductor chips. He has his own consultancy business.

Steve has a BSc. in Physics and Materials Engineering from Sheffield Hallam University and a PhD in Metallurgy from Loughborough University. After a time as a lecturer in Materials Engineering at Loughborough, Steve moved to the Netherlands in 1986. Steve was appointed Visiting Industrial Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering and Mechanical Engineering departments at the University of Sheffield in 2008 and is a member of the steering committee of the Leonardo Centre of Tribology and Surface Technology, as well as various department Industrial Advisory Boards.

Contact details:
s.franklin@sheffield.ac.uk
Tel.: +31 (0)6 374 60065
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-franklin/
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9124-0488

Professor Han has authored two edited volumes, and over 200 papers, including 90 in prestigious IEEE/ACM Transactions, and 60+ in CORE A* conferences. He has been an Associate Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier Neurocomputing, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Elsevier Pattern Recognition, and several others. He is a Fellow of IAPR and a Fellow of AAIA.

While Professor Han's primary research focus has been on computer vision, he has also expanded his research interests to medical image analysis and healthcare applications, vital areas in the application of computer vision technology. He has effectively employed deep learning techniques for medical image segmentation and also developed a human pose estimation model specifically tailored for post-stroke gait and balance disorders. By leveraging computer vision algorithms, Prof. Han aims to facilitate more precise and reliable diagnostic procedures.

Before that he was a Research Fellow in Computer Science working on health-related research projects. His first degree was in Computer Science from South China University of Technology and he has a PhD in hearing inspired automatic speech processing from the University of Sheffield.

Ning’s research interests lie in speech and hearing technologies, machine learning and healthcare. In particular, his research interests focus on development of AI systems that can interpret sounds and low-cost sensor data and extract useful information for screening health issues, such as sleep-disordered breathing and respiratory diseases. He has been PI and Co-PI of several UKRI and HEIF grants on acoustic monitoring of sleep-disordered breathing and cough sound analysis for tuberculosis screening. He is also interested in music AI technology and its link with mental health.

After this, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute. From 2016, I have been a lecturer at the University of Sheffield.

My group is interested in understanding the role of extracellular matrix internalisation in invasive cell migration and cell growth.

The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a complex network of secreted proteins that, beyond providing physical support to organs and tissues, regulates many cell functions, including proliferation, polarity, migration and oncogenic transformation.

Our aims are to understand the basic molecular events regulating ECM endocytosis, as well as how ECM uptake impinges on invasive cell migration and proliferation in complex 3D environments.

Do you have news to share with us?

If you would like us to include information and/or events to this newsletter please email: news@insigneo.org (the newsletter will be issued during the 2nd week of the month, excluding January and August). 

Insigneo members - please let us know when your students are graduating so that we can celebrate their success!

Please ensure that you submit items for inclusion with a minimum of one week's notice.

Guest Lectures, Conferences & Seminars

We will share a link to our Online Training Opportunities document here each month.

Insigneo events

14 July
Insigneo Showcase

A selection of Insigneo seminar recordings are available to view on our YouTube channel.

Other events

25 - 29 June
Sano: AI Neuro Summer School

6 July, 12.30pm @ 38 Mappin Street or online.
Upcoming funding opportunity in cancer research
The university benefits from funding ringfenced for cancer research at Sheffield, thanks to the commercialisation of the cancer drug Lynparza, first developed here.

Infrastructure, project and fellowship awards are expected to be in remit in the upcoming round.  The fund value is tbc but last year's fund was worth between £10m and £12m, ringfenced for applications led by University of Sheffield applicants from all faculties.

Find out more at an internal information session about the Yorkshire Cancer Research Sheffield Pioneers fund 2024 
Register here.

4 - 8 September
OpenFest 2023

12 - 14 September
CompBioMed Conference 2023 

14 - 15 September
BioMedEng23, Swansea 

10 - 12 October
Avicenna Days 2023

8 - 9 November
Child Health Technology conference (CHT 2023) - Abstract deadline 10 July

For a full list of upcoming events visit: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/insigneo/overview/events

Vacancies

Research Associate in Artificial Intelligence and Cardiopulmonary Imaging (closing date: 17 July 2023)

Publications

The role of bone metastases on the mechanical competence of human vertebrae (Bone) M. Palanca, G. Cavazzoni, E. Dall'Ara

Prediction of the 3D shape of the L1 vertebral body from adjacent vertebrae (Medical Image Analysis) M. Sensale, T. Vendeuvre, A. Germaneau, C. Grivot, M. Rochette, E. Dall'Ara

DLL4 promotes partial endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition at atherosclerosis-prone regions of arteries (Vascular Pharmacology) X. Li, C. Souilhol, L. Canham, X. Jia, M. Diagbouga, B. T. Ayllon, J. Serbanovic-Canic, P. C. Evans

Development of PCL PolyHIPE Substrates for 3D Breast Cancer Cell Culture (Bioengineering) C. E. Jackson, D. H. Ramos-Rodriguez, N. T. H. Farr, W. R. English, N. H. Green, F. Claeyssens

Mathematical Model of Clonal Evolution Proposes a Personalised Multi-Modal Therapy for High-Risk Neuroblastoma (Cancers) M. Italia, K. Y. Wertheim, S. Taschner-Mandl, D. Walker, F. Dercole

Validation of a novel numerical model to predict regionalized blood flow in the coronary arteries (European Heart Journal - Digital Health) D. J Taylor, J. Feher, K. Czechowicz, I. Halliday, D. R. Hose, R. Gosling, L. Aubiniere-Robb, M. van’t Veer, D. C J Keulards, P. Tonino, M. Rochette, J. P. Gunn, P. D. Morris

A Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Ursodeoxycholic Acid (UDCA) in Parkinson's Disease (Movement Disorders) T. Payne, M. Appleby, E. Buckley , L. M. A. van Gelder, B. H. Mullish, M. Sassani, M. J. Dunning , D. Hernandez, S. W. Scholz, A. McNeill, V. Libri, S. Moll, J. R. Marchesi, R. Taylor, L. Su, C. Mazzà, T. M. Jenkins, T. Foltynie, O. Bandmann 

A multi-sensor wearable system for the assessment of diseased gait in real-world conditions (Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology) F. Salis, S. Bertuletti, T. Bonci, M. Caruso, K. Scott, L. Alcock, E. Buckley, E. Gazit, C. Hansen, L. Schwickert, K. Aminian, C. Becker, P. Brown, A.-E. Carsin , B. Caulfield, L. Chiari, I. D'Ascanio, S. Del Din, B. M. Eskofier, J. Garcia-Aymerich, J. M. Hausdorff , E. C. Hume, C. Kirk, F. Kluge, S. Koch, A. Kuederle, W. Maetzler, E. M. Micó-Amigo, A. Mueller, I. Neatrour, A. Paraschiv-Ionescu, L. Palmerini, A. J Yarnall, L. Rochester, B. Sharrack, D. Singleton, B. Vereijken, I. Vogiatzis, U. Della Croce, C. Mazzà, A. Cereatti, For The Mobilise-D Consortium

A robust walking detection algorithm using a single foot-worn inertial sensor: validation in real-life settings  (Medical and Biological Engineering and Computing) G. Prigent, K.  Aminian, A. Cereatti, F. Salis, T.Bonci, K. Scott, C. Mazzà, L. Alcock, S. Del Din, E. Gazit, C. Hansen, A. Paraschiv-Ionescu, for the Mobilise-D consortium