A biomedical engineering professor Eleanor Stride has been awarded £300,000 for research into the treatment of major diseases. A University of Oxford professor has been awarded the IET’s prestigious A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize for her outstanding contributions to biomedical engineering and research into the treatment of major diseases.
Professor Eleanor Stride’s targeted drugs delivery research concerns the treatment of major diseases including cancer and strokes, where drugs are highly targeted to specific parts of the body, minimising exposure of healthy tissue. This is likely to reduce serious side effects and increase the number of patients eligible for treatments.
A promising approach to this challenge is to encapsulate drugs within a carrier particle that can be transported to a target site in the body and then activated to release the drug in a highly localised manner. For this approach to be effective however, it is essential to be able to manufacture particles with a very high degree of control. The £300,000 IET award will be used to further this research.
“Professor Stride’s research in drug delivery and biomedical ultrasonics is an excellent example of the innovation that can be achieved from the cross-fertilisation of engineering and biomedical sciences,” says Sir John O’Reilly, IET’s Awards Committee Chair.
“Targeted drug delivery is a ‘hot topic’ for contemporary research, as it has the potential to significantly improve treatment for many life-threatening diseases, particularly cancer. Professor Stride’s ongoing research is likely to have huge societal benefits and important implications for society and the healthcare industry.”
Professor Stride will give a special talk on 21 May 2015 about her research. Held at the Royal Society of Medicine, London, the lecture will also be available to watch live on IET.tv.
