PhD Studentship: Multimodal biophotonic technologies: Powering a revolution in diabetes research - PhD funded in Physics

About the Project

Diabetes is a debilitating condition that impacts the lives of millions of people around the world. Despite a global research effort, the negative effects of consistently elevated blood sugars on the cells and tissues of our bodies are poorly understood. The absence of this understanding greatly limits our ability to develop more effective treatments for potentially lethal side effects of diabetes e.g. heart attacks caused by the stiffening of the coronary arteries. The low sensitivity and resolution of clinical technologies used for the study of diabetes is a primary reason why generations of researchers have struggled to unpick how it affects our bodies. Innovative new technologies are urgently required that can analyse cells and tissues with high accuracy and resolution and simultaneously probe changes in structure (how are they put together), chemistry (what are they made of) and biomechanics (how stiff are they).

This project will involve driving the development of a hybrid, biophotonics based instrument that uses the combination of three cutting-edge research instruments to provide an unprecedented insight into the damaging effects of diabetes. Biophotonics is a highly dynamic field in which light-based tools and technologies are developed and applied to address the most challenging questions in biology and medicine. In this project, you will have the unique opportunity to combine the collective strengths of three leading biophotonic technologies; multiphoton microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and Brillouin scattering to discover powerful new insights into diabetes driven changes in biological systems such as the extracellular matrix of blood vessels and the cell membranes of red blood cells.

Multiphoton microscopy uses ultrafast pulses of laser light to excite nonlinear optical processes in the sample that encode multiscale information on the sample structure. Raman spectroscopy is an optical technique that provides a real-time chemical fingerprint of the sample composition, allowing molecular specific monitoring of changes due to disease from the nanoscale up to bulk (several cm’s). Finally, Brillouin scattering is an exciting new technique that exploits the interaction between light and sound waves within a sample to make a direct measurement of the sample’s stiffness and viscosity. All three techniques acquire data without damaging the sample, meaning the same sample to be measured many times allowing the time-evolution of complex biophysical processes to be monitored in ways that until now, have not been possible.

BioPhysics at Exeter

The Biophysics group at Exeter are at the forefront of biomedical translation in the UK. This project will utilise state of the art facilities such as CONTRAST, the UK’s first user-access coherent Raman scattering facility which aims to accelerate the translation of this cutting-edge technology into healthcare applications. As well as RaNT, a multimillion-pound research program pioneering a non-invasive technique that aims to reduce or completely remove the need for cancer surgery, providing rapid, pain-free detection and therapy, right at the patient’s bedside. Other facilities comprise a range of biophotonic methods all based on vibrational spectroscopy including Brillouin and infrared technologies, which can unravel physical and chemical properties of samples and are amenable to life science and healthcare applications.

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