Secondee focus: Anand Radhakrishnan - Innovation Scholar

Innovation Scholar

Anand Pallipurath Radhakrishnan

Tell us about your background

Through the Innovate UK’s Innovation Scholars Secondment scheme, I have seconded into Vesynta from University College London (UCL), where I was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Dept. of Chemical Engineering. I graduated in Biotechnology in India and received my PhD in Biochemical Engineering at UCL. I have accrued a multi-disciplinary skill set, specialising in the development of micro-engineering systems for various (bio)chemical and microbiological applications. I have deep expertise in fluid dynamics, microfluidics, in situ high-speed imaging, computational image analysis and downstream biochemical processes. I am keen on developing in vitro diagnostic devices in the field of healthcare engineering.

What is the secondment goal?

Over the next 30 months, I’ll be working alongside Vesynta to exchange skills and knowledge with a common goal of developing point-of-care drug monitoring devices to aid dose personalisation in oncology. While becoming an integral part of Vesynta’s Technology Development team, I am eager to learn key translational know-how required to bring a device from an academic lab to the patient bedside meeting all medical regulatory requirements, safety requirements, etc.

How will you be supporting Vesynta?

I will provide my technical skills and scientific knowledge to help Vesynta with their translational and engineering needs. I hope to accelerate Vesynta’s platform development of an in vitro diagnostic device, by implementing automation, miniaturisation and hardware integration strategies. In the long run, I also intend to facilitate cross-pollination of innovative ideas between UCL (academia) and Vesynta, to seek new avenues of biosensing research towards a wider range of target analytes.

What do you hope to gain from the secondment?

Career progression and skills adoption is a core focus of the Innovation Scholars Secondment initiative. In this regard, I am confident that this experience will propel me towards gaining a solid footing in Medical Technology Research and Development. I am excited by the opportunity to work at the interface of industry and academia, to generate intellectual property and acquire skills in design for manufacture, quality control, and acquiring regulatory approvals, to name a few.

What excites you about personalised dosing?

I am passionate about providing healthcare professionals the tools to perform efficient decision making to achieve optimal care that improves treatment success, minimises patient side-effects and reduce the risk of further medical complications. Previously, with the support of an EPSRC Innovation Grant, I’d brought together a team of doctors, microbiologists, and engineers to meet urgent clinical needs with engineering solutions – knowing the presence of knowledge gaps between faculties. To see my colleagues at Vesynta successfully materialise their vision has been encouraging, and the fact that I can join them in bringing the diagnostic device to the patient bedside is exciting! Ultimately, this secondment has the potential to re-write the gold standard in current precision dosing strategies of chemotherapy, to hopefully enhance the long-term quality of life of cancer patients.