Dan has been awarded the IRR Innovator 2026 prize, along with £5,000 in research funding. Dan's winning idea centres on the use of extracellular vesicles, tiny particles that can be isolated from all biological fluids, as a tool for the early diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, a breakthrough approach with significant clinical potential. The competition was organised in partnership with Dr Andrew McBryde of Edinburgh Innovations' ITPA Translational Community, and judged by a distinguished panel of industry experts: Hayley Gooding (Concept Life Sciences), Lissa Herron (Converge Challenge), and Douglas Gibson (previous IRR Innovator winner). Dan said: The IRR Innovator competition provided a fantastic opportunity to present my research to a broad audience and think creatively about its future commercial impact. I'm grateful for the insight and comments from the panel and look forward to using the award to progress my research.

Last weekend ESMB PhD students   Sofia   and Ellie attended the 29th EAP meeting held by the Analytical Science Network in Kettering, with both of them giving talks about their projects. Ellie presented her research on imaging and detecting PM2.5s in the brain, while   Sofia   spoke about her work designing a nanopore sensing platform for early diagnosis of ovarian cancer. The conference was a fantastic opportunity to meet fellow PhD students working in analytical science, as well as to network with industry and academic professionals in these fields.

Mathew has been selected as a finalist among 9 Young Scientists from Across the UK Shortlisted for Largest Unrestricted Science Prize. Three Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Laureates will receive £100,000 prizes at a 24 February gala in London. The Blavatnik Family Foundation and The New York Academy of Sciences today announced the Finalists for the 2026 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom. The Awards recognise scientific advances by UK researchers across Life Sciences, Chemical Sciences, and Physical Sciences & Engineering. On Tuesday, 24 February, Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, will reveal the three 2026 Laureates at a gala dinner and awards ceremony in London. Now in its ninth year, each Blavatnik Awards Laureate will receive an unrestricted £100,000 prize, while the remaining six Finalists will be awarded £30,000 each. Commenting on this remarkable achievement, Mathew said: I am delighted to have been no...

Huge congratulations to Haresh, who has passed his PhD viva. Thank you to Aleks Ponjavic and Ewen Calder for examining!

We're happy to welcome Ellie (PhD student), Muye (PhD student), and Charlie (5P student) to the group. We wish them the best of luck with their projects! 

We have developed an innovative method to detect small biological particles in blood samples, opening up new possibilities for earlier and more accurate disease diagnosis.  The technique, which we refer to as VISTA (Vesicle Imaging by Single-molecule TCCD Analysis), allows scientists to characterise tiny particles called extracellular vesicles (EVs), which are released by cells into the blood.  “This new tool is of huge potential, offering an easy way to obtain information from patient blood samples, without the need for invasive biopsies.” - Noelia. EVs carry molecular information of their cells of origin and are increasingly recognised as potential biomarkers for diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and infections. However, because EVs are highly variable, and similar in size to other particles in the blood, they have been difficult to study using traditional methods. This new approach combines fluorescent labelling (to make EVs glow), microfluidics (a system that m...

Our post-doc Abigail attended the  annual Target ALS meeting in Boston last week along with the rest of our consortium members, including Gian Tartaglia, Jenna Gregory, Fergal Waldron, and Neil Shneider. Abigail was invited to present our group’s work on detecting TDP-43 in biological fluids using our TDP-43 aptamer ( Zacco et al., 2022 ) and super-resolution microscopy. There was also a sneak-peek of some of our work using the FUS aptamers, some of which is now in a pre-print ( Zacco et al., 2025 )! It's always great to hear about progress made in this field, many thanks to the organisers for hosting and to all our fellow consortium members who did a great job presenting our work.