Insigneo Newsletter - April 2022

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! 

Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust partnership with the Insigneo Institute 

Sheffield Children's NHS Foundation Trust has joined the University of Sheffield’s Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine as a partner. This will bring opportunities for closer collaboration and the application of Insigneo’s computational 'in silico' and innovative technological approaches to child health challenges.

Insigneo Showcase 2022 - 
abstract submissions deadline: 16 May 2022

Join us to celebrate 10 years of Insigneo, hear more about our new research vision and network with members, clinicans and industry representatives

Date: Friday, 8 July 2022
Venue: The Diamond Building, The University of Sheffield
Registration and abstract submission open:
The deadline for abstract submissions for the poster display is 16 May 2022.

The Insigneo Institute's Annual Showcase event, which will be held on 8 July 2022. After taking a break due to the pandemic we are excited to be able to invite you to celebrate our 10th anniversary with us at the University of Sheffield's Diamond Building.

This full day event is an opportunity for our members, funding agencies, regulatory agencies, industrial colleagues, and other academic groups in the UK to meet and see first-hand the innovative research produced by our Institute.

The day will feature:

• A keynote talk and talks from each of our five new 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.

The day is planned as an in person event but we will continue to review government and university guidance relating to in person events.

The event is free of charge and places are available on a first come, first served basis. We invite you to register by 24 June 2022. 

Insigneo Alumni - 10 years on

This year we celebrate 10 years of Insigneo and we would love to hear from the many amazing academics, researchers and students who have been a part of our journey.  Please do join our Insigneo Alumni Group and keep in contact.

New members

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

Mina Aleemardani
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
PhD student

Mina is a second-year PhD student working in biomaterials and tissue engineering. She is developing amphiphilic polymers and designing 3D skin models.  She works at Kroto Research Institute, supervised by Prof Frederik Claeyssens.

Mina moved to Sheffield for her PhD in 2020. The main focus of her research is mimicking the human skin by considering the topography of the dermal-epidermal junction (DEJ) to develop more precise 3D skin models. The study includes various steps, such as synthesis of biocompatible polymers, design and fabrication of DEJ models, and analysis of the 3D models.

Aruã holds a PhD in Science from the University of São Paulo (2014-2020), Brazil. He was a Visiting Researcher at the University of Wollongong (Australia) for one year (2017-2018). He was nominated for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting by the Brazilian Academy of Science in 2019. He was awarded in the 5th Paschoal Senise Award for quality in PhD thesis and 1st place as best PhD thesis in Exact and Earth Sciences at University of Sao Paulo in 2021.

Aruã is currently working as Postdoctoral Research Associate in Implantable Bioelectronic Systems with Professor Ivan Minev on the IntegraBrain project in November 2020. The research has three main branches:

1. Electro-assisted 3D printing of Soft Hydrogels (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29037-6);
2. Gradient doping of Conducting Polymers by Bipolar Electrochemistry;
3. Development of novel Conductive/Electroactive Soft Hydrogels.

Email: a.dasilva@sheffield.ac.uk

In 2021, I obtained an integrated master’s degree in Bioengineering at the University of Sheffield. During my degree, I was also the president of Sheffield Bionics, where I led teams of students to design and build powered prosthetics for amputees.

My project currently involves 3D printing stretchable conductive materials onto a glove to form a multimodal sensing device that can monitor hand and muscle function. Once developed the aim is to take this device into clinical trials with patients who are suspected of having motor neurone disease and attempt early diagnosis

I have earned my masters of science degree in Autonomous and Intelligent Systems at the UoS and discovered my passion about research in Deep Learning and related application fields.

Human muscles, especially skeletal muscles of lower limbs, play an indispensable role in daily life as producers of strength and movement. Any long-term illness or other age-related loss of muscle mass and strength can cause mobility problems. Quantification of these muscles by measuring muscle volume can better understand these conditions, of which segmentation is one of the most important techniques. Segmenting individual muscles from MRI is a challenge and is usually done manually by trained specialists, however, it is very time consuming and subject to differences between observers. So, my research direction is to create a novel Deep Learning based automatic segmentation and classification of skeletal muscles.

She is currently a first year PhD student as part of the Advanced Biomaterials CDT in collaboration between the University of Sheffield and the University of Manchester. Her project will focus on the development of a bone clip – an angiogenic biomaterial to increase bone healing in critical size defects and nonunions.

MultiSim research: What happens to lower-limb kinematics if you alter the ankle axes in your MSK models? 

Researchers from the MultiSim project have had their paper 'Variations of lower-limb joint kinematics associated with the use of different ankle joint models' published in the Journal of Biomechanics.

This study we shows for the first time that different definitions of ankle joint axes affect not only the ankle kinematics but, more interestingly, also the kinematics of the proximal joints. These variations can be substantial at individual level, hence potentially affecting the comparisons across studies or leading to erroneous clinical conclusions.

Determining clinically-viable biomarkers for ischaemic stroke through a mechanistic and machine learning approach

Ivan Benemerito, Ana Paula Narata, Andrew Narracott, Alberto Marzo
Annals of Biomedical Engineering (2022): 1-11

Ischaemic stroke (IS) is the second cause of death worldwide. It occurs when a clot of blood obstructs a major artery, which limits the blood perfusion to brain districts downstream the occlusion. The leptomeningeal anastomoses (LMAs) are small vessels that connect different parts of the brain and provide alternative perfusion pathways. This can mitigate the consequences of the stroke, and it is known that individuals with extensive LMAs network tend to have better post-stroke outcome. However, LMAs can be observed only during an ischaemic event and only with imaging methods. Routinely used, non-invasive techniques such as transcranial Doppler ultrasound (TCD) can show whether the LMAs have been engaged or not but do not quantify the amount of distal perfusion, which is a quantity of clinical interest.

In this study our researchers modelled the brain haemodynamics using a 1D approach and supported it with machine learning (statistical emulators) to perform a sensitivity analysis of the brain circulation. This enabled the identification of biomarkers related to the level of perfusion downstream the occlusion of the middle cerebral artery. These biomarkers, derived from quantities which are routinely measured in clinical scenarios, allowed the identification of threshold values for maximising the probability that observed values of the biomarkers correspond to good or poor overall distal perfusion. 

The identified biomarkers show potential for clinical translation and could potentially assist doctors in the preliminary evaluation of stroke patients. The research team have recently started a collaboration with the Imaging and Brain INSERM Research Unit at University Hospitals of Tours (France), to validate these biomarkers using mouse models and develop usltrasound-based methodologies for their measurement in a clinical setting. 

Acknowledgements:
European Union Horizon 2020 Programme: CompBioMed (Grant Agreement No 675451), CompBioMed2 (Grant Agreement No 823712)

PhD success

We'd like to say a big congratulations to the following PhD students who have recently passed their vivas:

• Rasmus Wagner ‘In Vitro Damage Quantification of Medical Device Material Interaction with Blood Vessels’ (Roger Lewis)

• Qiao Li ‘Modelling the femur strength in a virtual postmenopausal osteoporotic population for application to in silico clinical trials’ (Pinaki Bhattacharya)

• Chloe Techens

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

Insigneo events

28 April
Sandpit event (10:15 - 13:15)

Lyudmila Mihaylova and Sanja Dogramadzi (ACSE) are organising a sandpit with the objective to stimulate discussion and joint work with clinicians. The aim is to discuss potential collaboration via MRC, EPSRC, the CDT call and other routes. In addition there is some seed funding to be awarded.

They would like to invite Insigneo members to join the sandpit to give a short talk about your research or as an attendee.  Please contact Sanja Dogramadzi s.dogramadzi@sheffield.ac.uk and Lyudmila S Mihaylova l.s.mihaylova@sheffield.ac.uk.

5 May
IMSB Group Seminar: Osteo-archaeology, anthropology, biomechanics and trauma: the dark side of bone science. Insigneo members: please check your diary for the calendar invitation with online joining instructions.

27 May
Insigneo Seminar: Dr Jennifer Ann Kruger (Auckland Bioengineering Institute)

12  May
Insigneo research theme workshop: Computational Modelling in Medicine
(15:00 - 17.00)

23 June
Insigneo research theme workshop: Biomaterials/Biomechanics/Cell engineering (14:30 - 16:00)

8 July
Insigneo Showcase - abstract submissions are open

20 September
Insigneo research theme workshop: Smart devices (10:30 - 12:00)

18 October
Insigneo research theme workshop: Computational Medicine (10:30 - 12:00)

22 November
Insigneo research theme workshop: Biomedical Imaging (11:00 - 12:30)

20 December
Insigneo research theme workshop: Healthcare data/AI (11:00 - 12:30)

Other events

27 April
VPHi Keynote webinar: Virtual Stress Testing for Osteoporosis Assessment - From Bench to Bedside

29 April
10:00 IICD, Imaging Theme Department Research in Progress Meeting – Jan Wolber (Title TBC), Jonathan Taylor 'Philips Step-by-step guide to planning a research study involving Positron Emission Tomography (PET)'. Please contact Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange access.

6 May
Mobilise-D webinar – Up and go: planning & conducting the clinical validation study

11 - 12 May
Child Health Technology Conference CHT2022

20 May
Tumour Response Assessments - Update and Radiographer Led Approaches

23 - 27 May
VPH Institute -  6th Summer School: Models & Simulations for highly multifactorial disorders

27 May
10:00 IICD, Department Research in Progress Meeting – Julian Gunn 'Percutaneous coronary intervention: state of the art'. Please contact Sarah Black (sarah.black@sheffield.ac.uk) to arrange access.

8 June
HELSI Bites: Protein - not just for athletes and bodybuilders

15 June
University Flagship Institute Researcher Engagement event

20 June
Sano Seminar: Marcin Wierzbinski 

21 - 24 June
International Conference on Computational Science

26 - 29 June 
27th Congress of the European Society of Biomechanics in Porto, Portugal

4 - 6 July
ESMC2022

4 - 9 July 
2022 Lipari Neuro Summer School

6 - 8 July
BRS22

10 - 14 July
9th World Congress of Biomechanics (WCB 2022)

30 August - 2 September
14th International Conference on Osteogenesis Imperfecta 

6 - 8 September
RSE Conference 2022, Newcastle

6 - 9 September
VPH2022 Conference:  Digital twins for personalised treatment development and clinical trials 

8 - 9 September 
BioMedEng22, UCL

18 - 22 September
MICCAI2022

21 - 23 October
Brainhack Krakow 2022 – the satellite event of the Neuronus Forum 2022

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

Publications 

Research output affiliated to Insigneo in Scopus (please ensure papers are affiliated to the Insigneo Institute by including the words "Insigneo Institute for in silico Medicine"):

Variations of lower-limb joint kinematics associated with the use of different ankle joint models (Journal of Biomechanics) E. Montefiori, C. F. Hayford, C. Mazzà

Low-voltage SEM of air-sensitive powders: From sample preparation to micro/nano analysis with secondary electron hyperspectral imaging (Micron) J.  F. Nohl, N. T. H.Farr, Y. Sun, G. M. Hughes, S. A. Cussen, C. Rodenburg

Relationships between tibial articular cartilage, in vivo external joint moments and static alignment in end-stage knee osteoarthritis: A micro-CT study (Journal of Orthopaedic Research) S. Rapagna, B. C. Roberts, L. B. Solomon, K. J. Reynolds, D. Thewlis, E. Perilli

Lung MRI with hyperpolarised gases: current & future clinical perspectives (The British journal of radiology) N. J. Stewart, L. J. Smith, H.-F. Chan, J. A. Eaden, S. Rajaram, A. J. Swift, N. D. Weatherley, A. Biancardi, G. J. Collier, D. Hughes, G. Klafkowski, C. S Johns, N. West, K. Ugonna, S. M. Bianchi, R. Lawson, I. Sabroe, H. Marshall, J. M. Wild

Thiolene-and Polycaprolactone Methacrylate-Based Polymerized High Internal Phase Emulsion (PolyHIPE) Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering (Biomacromolecules) B. Aldemir Dikici, A. Malayeri, C. Sherborne, S. Dikici, T. Paterson, L. Dew, P.Hatton, I. Ortega Asencio, S.MacNeil, C. Langford, N. R. Cameron, F. Claeyssens

Editorial: “Design, Modeling and Manufacturing of Scaffolds to Control Cell-Biomaterial Interactions in Tissue Engineering” (Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology) E. Mele, D. Tartarini, L. Moroni

Determining Clinically-Viable Biomarkers for Ischaemic Stroke Through a Mechanistic and Machine Learning Approach (Annals of Biomedical Engineering) I. Benemerito, A. P. Narata, A. Narracott, A. Marzo