Research and expertise
Biomedical research activities are centred on Higher Education Institutions at Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth and the Health Protection Agency and the Defence, Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down in Wiltshire.
South West Universities such as the University of Bristol and the University of Bath are centres of research excellence, ranking alongside Oxford and Cambridge for their scale and quality of bioscience research, according to the 2001 National Research Assessment Exercise.
University of Bristol
Medical and Vetinary Sciences brings together a number of world class departments, including Pathology and Microbiology, Biochemistry, Physiology and Pharmacology. These departments all work in leading areas of drug and major disease state research and have been a major source of new bioscience IP and spin-out companies.
Research anh Clinical Medicine: the co-location of clinical and Research medicine in Bristol results in there being key areas of Tertiary care in Bristol, heart surgery and oncology being excellent examples. These bring in their trained specialist facilities, increased research activity and a developing infrastructure to meet the growing needs of these specialist areas.
Nanotechnology Research: includes work in nanoparticles, materials (including biomaterials) and nanotechnology tools such as atomic force microscopy and electron microscopy. The University capital investment plans include the development of extensive new nanotechnology research factilities. This is an emerging new sectorinternationally and Bristol as a city and the south west as a region has the potential to become a major player, with a strong ressearch base and good industrial involvement from both new companies and established corporates.
www.bristol.ac.uk/research
University of Bath
Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology is internationally recognised as a center for research excellence. With strengths in the pharmaceutical and biological sciences, the Department has great expertise in the drug discovery process. Other specialisms are medicinal chemistry related to signal transduction, cardiovascular and immunopharmacology, pharmaceutical biology and pharmaceutical technology.
Department of Biology and Biochemistry Research includes structural molecular biology, enzyme structure and function, cell biology, developmental biology, neuroscience and microbial pathogenicity, and evolution and mathematical biology. The Department has its own DNA sequencing facilities and also a dedicated molecular biology computing facility.
Regenerative medicine, Strength in Engineering, Medical devices.
University of Exeter
Biocatalysis Centre is a purpose built computer suite dedicated to research advances in the analysis of biological information and the training of a new generation of Bioinformatics scientists. The Schools of Biology and computer sciences jointly run the EPSRC-sponsored MSc course in Bioinformatics.
Biocatalysis Center has been funded by the welcome Trust with a grant of £1.9 million together with top-up funding from the university to make a total of £2.5million. The Center will be investigating enzymes in four major areas.
- The production of very pure drugs for the pharmaceutical industry
- Biotechnological applications for other industries, such as food and waste disposal
- The use of enzymes as bio-sensors. Enzyme changes can indicate the onset of certain diseases. Type 2 diabetes, for example, is associated with several specific changes in a particular enzyme.
- Enzymes which have been identified in Exeter that are involved in vitamin c synthesis by plants and in devastating fungal diseases such as Rice Blast. The Center will foster further work on their mode of action and biotechnological applications.
Center of Genomics in Society study societal and ethical issues related to genomics from GM crops to human Cloning. This builds on Exeter's national ranking of unequalled first in Philosophy and Social Sciences and the Philosophy of Biology.
University of West of England
UWE has particular strengths in biomedicine, appearance and health psychology, plant sciences, sensor science, diagnostics, epidermiology, science communication, water quality and air quality management, via the Faculty of Applied Sciences. The university has expertise and advanced facillities for modelling denomics and sensors in science are applied to advancing practice in diagnosis and treatment of disease in humans and plants. This supports the diagnostics, pharmaceutical and agri-chemical industries including SMEs in the region.
Peninsula Medical School
Partnership between universities of Exeter and Plymouth and Devon and Cornwall NHS Trusts. Biomedical research, Clinical Education and Health Services research -Diabetes, Cancer, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke etc
www.pms.ac.uk
