A project coordinated by portfolio company Cambridge Raman Imaging (“CRI” or the “Company”) has been selected to receive a €3.3 million grant in the European Innovation Council’s (“EIC”)Transition call.
The project, called CHARM, aims to develop a medical device based on high-speed, low-cost Raman digital imaging technology and artificial intelligence to transform cancer diagnosis and treatment. The technology will analyse the molecular composition of patient tissue samples to distinguish cancerous from healthy cells without the need for chemical staining.
CHARM is a pan-European collaboration between CRI, the University of Cambridge, Italian institutions Politecnico Di Milano and Consiglio Nazionale Delle Ricerche, the Jena University Hospital in Germany, and project management firm IN s.r.l. CRI is to receive €1.3 million of the grant, which is being made to its wholly-owned Italian subsidiary Cambridge Raman Imaging s.r.l.
The project coordinator is Dr Matteo Negro, CRI’s Chief Technology Officer. CHARM is one of 42 projects selected for funding from 292 submitted in the first ever EIC Transition awards, intended to support moving technologies from laboratories into the real world. It aims to develop the device to the preclinical validation phase.
Frontier IP holds a 25.8 per cent equity stake in CRI.
CRI’s Raman imaging technology uses graphene-based ultra-fast fibre lasers to generate digital images of patient tissue for automatic analysis by artificial intelligence to support diagnosis. Because the images are digital, they can be viewed remotely, allowing histopathologists to work more efficiently and to support regions and countries short of qualified staff. The technology also potentially opens the way for personalised treatments for cancer.
The Company’s technology is also part of CRIMSON, another pan-European project developing technology to monitor diseases unfolding in cells in real time. This has the potential to deepen understanding of the cellular origins of the disease and to enable the development of new treatments. CRI has also entered into a collaboration with Motic, a manufacturer of medical imaging devices.
The EIC is Europe’s flagship innovation programme to identify, develop and scale up breakthrough technologies and game-changing innovations.
We are proud to see our technology recognised by the EU as a potentially disruptive innovation, able to strongly support histopathologists in their clinical routine, by providing objective chemical information on tissues to improve cancer diagnosis accuracy and personalised treatment selection.
“CRI has a mission to bring coherent Raman histopathology to the clinical market and the EIC Transition grant will be boosting our activities towards a successful commercialisation of our innovation.
Dr Matteo Negro, Cambridge Raman Imaging’s Chief Technology Officer and CHARM project coordinator
Cambridge Raman Imaging’s novel technology has the potential to revolutionise cancer diagnosis and treatment, not least by making it more widely available through histopathologists working remotely. The EIC grant provides further strong validation of the approach being taken by the Company.
Neil Crabb, Chief Executive Officer of Frontier IP Group
