Our successful annual conference Breaking Boundaries: Innovation and Enterprise in Medicine , showcased the many ways staff are involved in enterprise activities both within the Faculty and more widely across the University. It featured talks from external guests and our own world-renowned scientists including Professors Stephen Holgate and Martin Glennie. We presented the Faculty’s inaugural enterprise awards to reward both an individual’s personal achievement and his/her contribution to furthering the enterprise agenda within Medicine at Southampton. Professor Richard Oreffo took the Senior prize and Sandrine Williame-Morawek and Ali Roghanian jointly received the Junior prize.
A Material Transport Agreement (MTA) has been signed off with Cancer Sciences at Southampton and Celldex. This further enhances the relationship between our organisations and adds to already existing licensed technology which is currently in Phase II of a collaborative clinical trial.
Our Faculty enterprise units go from strength to strength. The Wessex Institute has won several new contracts over the summer: a new five year contract for SHTAC (the Southampton Health Technology Assessments Centre), to start in 2016; a new contract with the Welsh Assembly Government to run research programmes for the National Institute for Social Care and Health Research and a contract to provide a scientific secretariat to the work of the HTAi (Health Technology Assessment international) Policy Forum. Work is continuing on setting up the new NIHR Dissemination Centre (to start April 2015) and on delivering the ongoing work of both NETSCC and SHTAC. The Cancer Informatics Research Unit is busy responding to invitations to tender from the new NIHR Clinical Research Networks across England offering EDGE, an innovative cloud-based clinical management system, as a solution to the CRN's local portfolio management system requirements.
Our University Industry Sector Team (UIST) Health + Pharma, continues to establish new partnerships with external organisations. We have established a link with the government’s MedCity initiative that is supporting development of the biotech sector in the greater South East to give them an overview of the biomed profile of the south coast. The UIST Collaboration manager Brigitte Lavoie has met with 35 companies in the South and moved forward discussions with other regional bodies to support the development of a Wessex biotech network. The UIST H + P has also supported the launch of the student led Wessex Biotech Initiative that aims to promote interaction between students and the local biotech industry.
Turning to our international links, we have welcomed three PhD students from Columbia following Professor David Wilson’s visits to the country; we expect more to join us in future years. We are also hoping to bring in students from universities in Brazil, most notably from Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais. Thanks to the work of Sylvia Pender we have increased the strength of our research links with International Medical University in Kuala-Lumpur with the signing of a MoU by the Vice-Chancellor on his recent visit to South East Asia, and have begun exploring closer links with the Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN).