EPS PGR Christmas Lecture 2024: The Future of Disease Diagnostics
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EPS PGR Christmas Lecture 2024: The Future of Disease Diagnostics
Wed, 04/12/2024 - 14:00 to 16:00
Location:
Speaker:
Prof. Rachel McKendry
Affiliation:
University College London
Synopsis:
In the Heriot-Watt Christmas Lecture 2024, I will explore the crucial role of diagnostics tests in medicine. During the pandemic, diagnostics tests came to the fore as a crucial countermeasure to the spread of COVID-19.1 Moreover, an estimated 70% of all clinical decisions rely on the results of diagnostic tests, highlighting their crucial role in healthcare. Yet all too often diseases, including infections and cancer, are diagnosed at the late stage, where treatment options are more limited, with increased risk of suffering, or even loss of life. This is a human tragedy first and foremost, but late diagnosis also has economic consequences for health systems – late-stage diagnosis is often more complex, lengthy and costly. Looking to the future we need to get better at diagnosing diseases at the very early stages when they are more treatable, and preventable. I will explore how emerging technologies, including digital and quantum technologies, could unlock a step change in much earlier disease diagnosis and disease prevention strategies.1-5 I will present our vision for the new UK Quantum Biomedical Sensing Research Hub (Q-BIOMED), and discuss the opportunities and challenges translating discovery research into scalable cost-effective diagnostic technologies to benefit patients, populations, global health systems and society.
References.
[1] ‘Lateral flow test engineering and lessons learned from COVID-19’ Budd, Miller, Weckman, Cherkaoui, Huang, De Cruz, Fongwen, Han, Broto, Estcourt, Gibbs. Pillay, Sonnenberg, Meurant, Thomas, Keegan, Stevens, Nastouli, Topol, Johnson, Shahmanesh, Ozcan, Collins, Fernandez Suarez, Rodriguez, Peeling, McKendry Nature Reviews Bioengineering 1, 13 (2023).
[2] ‘Digital technologies in the public-health response to COVID-19’ Budd, Miller, Manning, Lampos, Zhuang, Edelstein, Rees, Emery, Stevens, Keegan, Short, Pillay, Manley, Cox, Heymann, Johnson & McKendry Nature Medicine 26, 1183 (2020).
[3] ‘Deep learning of HIV field-based rapid tests’ Turbe, Herbst, Mngomezulu, Meshkinfamfard, Dlamini, Mhlongo, Smit, Cherapanova, Shimada, Budd, Arsenov, Gray, Pillay, Herbst, Shahmanesh McKendry Nature Medicine 27, 1165 (2021).
[4] ‘Spin-enhanced nanodiamond biosensing for ultrasensitive diagnostics’ Miller, Bezinge, Gliddon, Huang, Dold, Gray, Heaney, Dobson, Nastouli, Morton & McKendry Nature 587, 588 (2020).
[5] ‘To combat AMR invest in test-to-treat strategies’ McKendry et al Nature 633, 525 (2024).
Biography:
Professor Rachel McKendry is Professor of Biomedicine and Nanotechnology at UCL and holds a joint appointment between the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Division of Medicine. Her research focuses on early disease diagnosis and is at the cutting edge of quantum technologies, deep learning, mHealth, medicine and public health. She is Director of the EPSRC Digital Health Hub for Antimicrobial Resistance (2023-26) and will be the Co-Director of the new £24M Q-BIOMED Quantum Biomedical Sensing Research Hub (starting in December 2024). Professor McKendry has won several awards for her research including the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award, Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award, the Institute of Physics Paterson Medal, Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) A F Harvey International Engineering Research Prize 2023 and Cornforth Award 2024. She has held a number of senior Advisory Roles: she chaired the UK Biosurveillance Network Advisory Group, co-chaired the Digital Medicine Theme of the NHS Topol Review 'Preparing the Healthcare Workforce to Deliver the Digital Future’, served on the steering group of the UK Cross Council Programme for AMR, as well as advising the World Health Organisation and the International Pandemic Preparedness 100 Days Mission Scientific and Technical Advisory Group for Diagnostics.