JPK Instruments, a world-leading manufacturer of nanoanalytic instrumentation for research in life sciences and soft matter, is pleased to announce the installation of multiple instrument solutions at the new Swansea University (Wales, UK) Centre for NanoHealth.

One of the biggest challenges facing the future of healthcare is enhancing early intervention in diagnosing and treating diseases in non-hospital environments, in the home, community clinic or local doctors’ surgery. Current medical practice is based around relatively late intervention, which with many diseases does not result in complete cure, but rather extends a patient’s life whilst, hopefully, maintaining quality of life. The key to early intervention is the earliest possible detection of disease, and the swift identification of appropriate medical or surgical treatments. The Centre for NanoHealth is a unique interdisciplinary research centre based on the application of Nanotechnology leading innovations in Healthcare established to address these challenges.

The acquisition of the latest instrumentation techniques is of important benefit to the Centre’s future research programs and the announcement that JPK Instruments is supply multiple solutions is welcomed by the group. Using JPK’s patented NanoWizard® AFM platform, systems will initially be used in three exciting applications areas. Dr. Chris Wright will lead a team to study cell mechanics as part of his program on bionanotechnology which focuses on nanoscale mechanisms of disease and its control. Dr. Peter Dunstan will be developing chemical finger printing techniques using TERS – tip enhanced Raman spectroscopy which will couple the AFM to a Raman spectrometer. Professor Steve Wilks is to use new electrical mode innovations to develop the next generation of diagnostic sensors having unprecedented sensitivity by applying nanowire technology.

The choice of JPK to supply these systems came after extensive evaluation of different vendors to match the needs of the Centre. JPK responded with the commitment to deliver the best instrumentation and unrivalled customer-focused applications support to match their company goal of bridging the worlds of nanotechnology tools and life science applications with cutting-edge technology and unique applications expertise

Professor Steve Wilks, Deputy Head of the Swansea University’s School of Engineering and Director of The Centre for NanoHealth said: “The JPK instruments will provide the CNH with a world-leading platform to understand the behaviour of cells and proteins at the nanoscale and identify key detection mechanisms for clinical screening. This is essential for the development of next generation medical sensors for diagnosing diseases at a much earlier stage.”

For further details of the NanoWizard® and applications from JPK, please visit the JPK web site, www.jpk.com, and for further information on Swansea University’s Centre for NanoHealth visit http://www.swansea.ac.uk/engineering/NanoHealth/.

About Swansea University’s Centre for NanoHealth

The Centre for NanoHealth (CNH) will be located within a Clinical and Biomedical research environment on Swansea’s Singleton hospital site, giving access to patients and creating a pioneering, integrated facility in which novel devices and sensors can be designed, manufactured, functionalised, tested and evaluated. The £21.6M project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh European Funding Office, Swansea University, NHS Trust, WAG Health Department and Industry. Technology, and particularly Nanotechnology, has an increasingly important and strategic role to play in furthering our ability to detect and treat disease, and this has been central to the work of the University’s Multidisciplinary Nanotechnology Centre (MNC), established within the School of Engineering in 2001.