Dr Chris Macdonald’s groundbreaking Virtual Reality public speaking platform won the Technological Innovation of the Year category at the Times Higher Education Awards 2025.
Those who use the VR platform can practise in a stadium in front of 10,000 animated spectators, with loud noises, stadium lights, and flashing cameras.
Dr Chris MacDonald
Dr Macdonald – a Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College – was among a number of University staff recognised for their innovative contribution to research and academia during a ceremony at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre.
Cambridge’s PROFILE trial team were shortlisted in the Research Project of the Year: STEM category, for their transformative work on early biologic therapy for newly diagnosed Crohn’s disease. And Technician Development Advisor John Nicolson was shortlisted for Outstanding Technician of the Year, for his leadership and commitment to the technical community.
Dr Macdonald’s free, first-of-its-kind platform provides Virtual Reality (VR) training environments, as well as support from an AI coach, to build confidence in people with public speaking anxiety and transform them into skilled and confident presenters.
He said: “Prior to a presentation, most students tend to practise on their own, in a highly controlled environment – normally in their bedrooms – to an audience of zero. As a result, it will feel like a significant step up when they present to even a small group of people, and even a subtle audience gesture can throw them off.
“By contrast, those who use my VR platform can practise in a different venue every night to a wide range of increasingly distracting audiences and fear-inducing scenarios. They can, for example, practise in a stadium in front of 10,000 animated spectators, with loud noises, stadium lights, and flashing cameras. Accordingly, a subsequent presentation to a small group can feel like a step down. I call this overexposure therapy. It could be thought of as psychological weight training. And it has been shown to build extra adaptability, grit, and resilience.”
He added: “The goal in my lab is simple but ambitious: build high-impact transformational tools and make them free to all. By working with truly visionary philanthropists, I believe we can make that a reality and transform millions of lives.”
Researchers have achieved a new level of control over the atomic structure of a family of materials known as halide perovskites, creating a finely tuned ‘energy sandwich’ that could transform how solar cells, LEDs and lasers are made.
Due to their remarkable ability to absorb and emit light, and because they are cheaper and can be configured to convert more of the solar spectrum into energy than silicon, perovskites have long been touted as a potential replacement for silicon in solar cells, LEDs and quantum technologies.
However, their instability and durability have, so far, largely limited perovskite devices to the laboratory. In addition, scientists have struggled to precisely control the thickness of perovskite films, and control how different perovskite layers interact when stacked together – an important step in building functional, multi-layered structures.
Now, a team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge has found a new way to grow ultra-thin layers of perovskite films so their atoms line up perfectly, which could enable more powerful, durable and efficient devices.
The researchers used a vapour-based technique to grow three-dimensional and two-dimensional perovskites one layer at a time, which enabled them to control the thicknesses of the films down to fractions of an atom. Their results, reported in the journal Science, could open the door to usable perovskite devices that can be produced at scale, using a process like that used to make commercial semiconductors.
Each layer in a semiconductor ‘sandwich’ does a different job in moving electrons and their positively-charged counterparts – called holes – around and determines how the semiconductors absorb or emit light. Together, the layers act like one-way streets that guide the electric charges in opposite directions, preventing them from bumping back into each other and wasting energy as heat.
In other widely used semiconductors, such as silicon or newer materials such as gallium nitride, the properties of the individual layers can be fine-tuned using various methods. But perovskites, despite their excellent performance, have so far proved difficult to control in layered devices, due in part to their ‘chaotic’ atomic structure.
“A lot of perovskite research uses solution processing, which is messy and hard to control,” Professor Sam Stranks from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, who co-led the research. “By switching to vapour processing — the same method used for standard semiconductors — we can get that same degree of atomic control, but with materials that are much more forgiving.”
The researchers used a combination of three-dimensional and two-dimensional perovskites to create and control their atomically-tuned stacks, a phenomenon known as epitaxial growth. This fine control let the team directly observe how the light given off by the material changes depending on whether it’s a single layer, a double layer, or thicker.
“The hope was we could grow a perfect perovskite crystal where we change the chemical composition layer by layer, and that’s what we did,” said co-first author Dr Yang Lu from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology and Cavendish Laboratory. “It’s like building a semiconductor from the ground up, one atomic layer after another, but with materials that are much easier and cheaper to process.”
The researchers also found they could engineer the junctions between the layers to control whether electrons and holes stayed together or apart — a key factor in how efficiently a material emits light.
“We’ve reached a level of tunability that wasn’t even on our radar when we started,” said Professor Sir Richard Friend from the Cavendish Laboratory, who co-led the research. “We can now decide what kind of junction we want — one that holds charges together or one that pulls them apart — just by slightly changing the growth conditions.”
The researchers found they could tune the energy difference between the layers by more than half an electron volt, and in some cases, extend the lifetime of electrons and holes to over 10 microseconds: far longer than usual.
The team says this level of precision could pave the way for scalable, high-performance devices that use light in new ways, from lasers and detectors to next-generation quantum technologies.
“Changing the composition and performance of perovskites at will – and probing these changes – is a real achievement and reflects the amount of time and investment we’ve made here at Cambridge,” said Stranks. “But more importantly, it shows how we can make working semiconductors from perovskites, which could one day revolutionise how we make cheap electronics and solar cells.”
The research was supported in part by the Royal Society, the European Research Council, the Simons Foundation, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Richard Friend is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Sam Stranks is a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.
For more information on energy-related research in Cambridge, please visit the Energy IRC, which brings together Cambridge’s research knowledge and expertise, in collaboration with global partners, to create solutions for a sustainable and resilient energy landscape for generations to come.
The University of Cambridge has been recognised for the work it does to ensure care experienced students are supported while studying for their degrees. The University has received the Quality Mark from the National Network for the Education of Care Leavers (NNECL) in recognition of its plans to improve student experience and outcomes throughout their time with the University.
The University recognises that this work is ongoing
Mike Nicholson
Mike Nicholson, Director of Recruitment, Admissions and Participation welcomed the news:
“The University is delighted to receive the NNECL Quality Mark in recognition of the valuable activity that takes place across the collegiate University to support students from care experienced backgrounds navigate their time at Cambridge. The University recognises that this work is ongoing, and is grateful that making this application has both identified those areas where we already have strengths in the support we offer whilst also helping us see scope for further action and improvement.”
The NNECL Quality Mark enables institutions to assess their current practice, identify gaps in provision and establish areas for further development. Several Universities and FE Colleges have been awarded it over recent years.
Sian Edwards, Programme Manager at the NNECL, praised the University’s approach:
“We are delighted to award the University of Cambridge the NNECL Quality Mark in recognition of their commitment to supporting students from care experienced and estranged backgrounds. Navigating the complexities of a devolved college model presents unique challenges, yet the University has demonstrated dedication to developing and embedding consistent, inclusive practices across the institution. Their whole-university approach ensures that care experienced and estranged learners are supported to achieve positive outcomes. Congratulations to everyone at the University of Cambridge on this well-deserved recognition.”
Students attending the university who are care-experienced, or estranged from family, are entitled to the maximum level of financial support available through the Cambridge Bursary Scheme. With other grants and awards added, this can amount to more than £8,000 a year. Colleges will also provide accommodation all year round as these students often do not have homes to return to out of term-time.
In 2018, the University of Cambridge was one of the first signatories to the government’s Care Leaver Covenant which commits partners to providing educational and career opportunities to young people exiting the care system.
Around 38 care experienced students were admitted to an undergraduate degree course or to the University’s Foundation Year in 2025 but the true number might be higher as this figure is based on students who declare their status at registration and might not include all those who are estranged from family.
The Principal of Homerton College, Lord Simon Woolley, was brought up by foster parents in the 1960s and 70s. He has spoken at a number of events and conferences aimed at breaking down barriers for care experienced teenagers:
“It is imperative that both the University and the Colleges recognise the challenges for those who have been in care and have had the amazing journey to be here at Cambridge. We need to acknowledge them but also ensure we have an infrastructure in place that helps them go from A to B and on to further success. The NNECL Quality Mark is a recognition that we are on the right track.”
Widening participation co-ordinator, Kirstyn Kedaitis, accepted the Quality Mark on behalf of the University. She says:
‘The action plan we submitted in our NNECL Quality Mark application maps out our goals for improvement over the next three years. We have already started a staff project centred around best practice in supporting students from highly under-represented groups, including backgrounds of care experience and estrangement. In January, we will complement this by establishing a working group focused specifically on addressing our Quality Mark action plan. This working group will include representation from Cambridge’s care experienced and estranged student community.’
More information about the NNECL’s Quality Mark can be found here.
Information and guidance on the support available to students at Cambridge who are care experienced or estranged from family can be found here.
An ancient plant-fungus partnership has been revealed using advanced microscopy imaging, providing evidence of the mutually beneficial relationship that enabled plants to adapt to life on land.
Our new technique is opening an exciting new window on life’s earliest chapters.
Raymond Wightman
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natural History Museum, London have identified a new species of ancient symbiotic fungus preserved within a 407-million-year-old plant fossil from Scotland. The discovery provides unprecedented three-dimensional insight into one of the earliest known plant–fungus partnerships, known as mycorrhiza.
Gardeners and farmers know mycorrhizae are vital for plant health – with these fungi living symbiotically inside plant roots, extending their reach to absorb water and nutrients like phosphorus. This mutually beneficial partnership underpins the majority of plant life today and is one of nature’s most successful relationships.
Studying this partnership, which dates back to when plants first colonised land, is allowing scientists to discover new information about how plant-fungi partnerships shaped ecosystems for hundreds of millions of years.
The advanced microscopy techniques used to distinguish the fungus from the surrounding plant cells open a powerful new way to identify fossilised life forms. By analysing the fossils’ unique light signatures – a kind of natural fingerprint preserved through time – scientists can detect traces of organisms long after their DNA has vanished.
Published today in the journal New Phytologist, the paper describes a new species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus, Rugososporomyces lavoisierae, forming a symbiotic relationship with the early land plant, Aglaophyton majus – the second fungal species known to have been hosted by this plant.
The fossil from the Windyfield Chert, Scotland provides the most detailed evidence to date that early land plants engaged in complex symbiotic relationships with multiple fungal species over 400 million years ago.
The implications of this discovery extend far beyond the immediate findings.
“This is just the start. By applying these methods to the fossilised remains of different organisms, we now have a powerful new tool to tell apart structures that may look similar but differ in their fine ultrastructure, for example ancient arthropods, plants and fungi,” said Professor Sebastian Schornack, Group Leader at the Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University, who co-led the study.
He added: “This technique adds a new dimension to how we identify, describe and discriminate fossilised ancient life, using the unique light signals these materials emit as a kind of fingerprint. Although the original biological material is fossilised and no DNA remains, these optical signatures preserve vital clues to their identity.”
Using these techniques with other fossils from the Windfield and nearby Rhynie cherts, researchers aim to understand how early symbioses evolved and how plants and fungi first learned to coexist.
The fossil analysis brought together specialists from the Natural History Museum – who found the new fungus and conducted brightfield microscopy and confocal microscopy with the Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris; the Sainsbury Laboratory Microscopy Core Facility – who conducted confocal, fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM) and Raman imaging; and the Cambridge Graphene Centre, responsible for Raman spectroscopy.
The combined use of advanced imaging and spectroscopy applied for the first time to a fossil plant enabled the team to distinguish fossilised fungal and plant tissues based on their unique light signatures, marking a breakthrough that could transform how scientists’ study ancient life in the future.
“By combining confocal fluorescence lifetime imaging with Raman spectroscopy, we can chemically identify ancient microscopic life forms with remarkable precision. Our new technique is opening an exciting new window on life’s earliest chapters,” said Dr Raymond Wightman, Manager of the Sainsbury Laboratory Microscopy Core Facility who led the FLIM imaging work.
The fossil, held at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, was prepared and studied by the Natural History Museum’s scientific associate Dr Christine Strullu-Derrien, who co-led the study.
“Mycorrhizas are very rare in the fossil record and have never been found in the Windyfield Chert before. The presence of the arbuscule shows that the fungus wasn’t parasitising on the plant or feeding on it after death – instead, there was a symbiotic association. The fungus would have provided minerals like phosphorus in return for sugars from the plant in a way that benefits them both,” said Dr Christine Strullu-Derrien.
This fossilised relationship was found to closely resemble modern arbuscular mycorrhizal associations that continue to play a vital role in plant nutrition and soil health today.
The UK’s drive to net zero won’t succeed on wind turbines and solar farms alone. The real bottleneck is moving that clean electricity from remote fields and offshore platforms to the homes, cities and industries that need it.
However, a report co-authored by researchers from the University of Cambridge highlights a technology that could change the game: high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables.
The UK is a world leader in offshore wind. But transmitting electricity from the North Sea to the Midlands and south, without losing much of it along the way, is a growing technological and political challenge.
With their ultra-high power density and near-zero losses, HTS cables could be a solution. They can carry vast amounts of electricity underground, quietly, and efficiently, without the need for overhead transmission lines.
“The real attraction of superconducting transmission is that it allows us to carry more electricity, over longer distances, without wasting energy or disrupting the environment,” said Professor Tim Coombs from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, a co-author of the report, commissioned by the Institute of Physics (IOP).
Traditional aluminium cables strung from pylons lose between 5% and 10% of the electricity they generate as heat. For the UK, that adds up to 25 terawatt hours a year — energy worth around £3.75 billion annually.
HTS cables, cooled by liquid nitrogen, have no electrical resistance. They can deliver electricity generated hundreds of miles away without waste, turning what is currently a massive cost into a massive saving.
Additionally, a single buried HTS cable can carry the same amount of power as multiple aluminium or copper overhead or underground lines. In urban areas where land is scarce, this density makes a huge difference: far fewer trenches or rows of pylons are needed. And because the cables can be buried, the visual impact on the countryside is minimal.
For consumers, this means preserving landscapes while still connecting to renewable power. For industry and government, it means removing bottlenecks that threaten the grid as different sources of energy come online.
“Grid bottlenecks sometimes force operators to curtail generation, wasting clean power,” said Coombs. “HTS cables could act as low-loss ‘superhighways’ to move renewable energy exactly where it’s needed. They could also be used to feed the output of large solar farms straight into the grid, without the need for long new transmission lines. HTS makes every unit of clean electricity count — reducing reliance on fossil fuels and easing the need for costly new power stations.”
Although initial investment costs for HTS cables are higher than for aluminium lines, the savings from reduced energy losses, greater grid reliability, and avoidance of new fossil-fuel generation more than offset these expenses over time.
Coombs and his colleagues specialise in turning the theory of superconductivity into viable engineering designs. They have worked on the fabrication of defect-free HTS tapes, improved cryogenic cooling systems, and developed new methods for integrating HTS with existing high-voltage alternating and direct current (HVAC and HVDC) grids.
“Cambridge research has always combined fundamental discovery with practical application,” said Coombs. “In superconductivity, that means moving from the lab bench to systems that can really carry the nation’s power.”
Other nations are already demonstrating HTS technology at scale: projects in Germany (AmpaCity), the US, Japan and China have shown that superconducting cables can operate reliably in live grid environments.
With electricity demand expected to rise sharply due to the electrification of transport and heating, the UK risks being left behind unless it acts quickly to move from research prototypes to substantial field trials.
The IOP report highlights the need for major UK demonstration projects — a buried HTS transmission link capable of handling real grid demands. Such a trial would not only prove performance and reliability but also help establish standards and build supply chains for this emerging industry.
“This should be treated as a national priority,” says Coombs. “A field trial on British soil would place us at the forefront of a technology set to grow globally over the next half-century. The benefits are not just environmental — they are industrial and strategic too, helping the UK bridge the gap between promising prototypes and full-scale deployment.”
If the UK develops HTS transmission technology successfully, there may be opportunities to supply components and expertise to international projects, such as the European Supergrid and Asian renewable networks.
British-made superconducting cables, fault current limiters, and associated cryogenic systems could find niche markets abroad, supporting high-value jobs and the UK’s manufacturing base.
As countries expand renewable energy and look to reduce carbon emissions, demand for efficient, low-loss transmission is expected to grow. HTS technology could offer solutions and potential new markets over the coming decades.
For the government, HTS represents a way to meet climate targets more affordably by reducing the need for additional generating capacity. For the electricity supply industry, it promises greater efficiency and resilience in the face of rising demand. And for the public, it means protecting landscapes while cutting bills and carbon.
“Superconducting transmission is not a futuristic dream — it is a practical solution to today’s challenges,” said Coombs. “By investing now, we can secure energy security, lower costs, and ensure the UK leads in a technology the world will soon need.”
Tim Coombs is a Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Cambridge researchers have developed a new way to measure the impact of our food production on other species’ survival around the world.
It reveals nuances that could guide national agricultural policies – and perhaps also influence our personal dietary choices.
How does your dinner affect the risk of 30,875 species of land-dwelling animal going extinct?
Dr Thomas Ball can tell you. Depending on what you’re eating he can calculate the likelihood of the global demise of every mammal, bird, amphibian and reptile over the next 100 years. He’ll tell you that not all dinners are equal.
“Every time anyone eats anything, it has an impact on the other species we share the planet with,” says Ball, a postdoctoral researcher in the Conservation Science Group in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology.
“Rearing the cattle for one kilo of beef needs a huge amount of land, which displaces a lot of natural habitat. On average, that has a much bigger impact on species’ survival than growing one kilo of vegetable protein like beans or lentils.”
Of the many ways that our appetites harm biodiversity, land-use change and habitat destruction for farming are the most damaging.
In the past six decades almost a third of the global land surface has been altered for agriculture.
Halting species extinctions arising from this is a key policy concern.
Ball isn’t just concerned with what we eat, but where it comes from. Beef imported to the UK from Australia and New Zealand – more common since Brexit – can drive up the environmental impact of our meat-eating because those countries are home to a much greater variety of species than the UK.
And while we can choose to buy locally reared beef, many of our everyday favourites like coffee, chocolate, and bananas can’t be grown in Britain at all. They’re produced in tropical regions, which are far richer in biodiversity than Britain, where converting tropical natural habitat to agricultural land impacts many more species.
To add even more complexity, the same food crop grown in different locations can affect species extinction risk differently. Choose coffee grown in Costa Rica, for example, and your caffeine boost might be ten times worse for biodiversity than if you’d chosen coffee grown in Brazil.
“The coffee you choose to buy can really impact the likelihood of species going extinct,” says Ball.
“This is not only because of the species being displaced to produce it, but also because farmers get very different yields from different coffee bean varieties for the same area of land,” he adds.
Quantifying food’s impact
Ball is part of a Cambridge-led team putting real numbers on the biodiversity impacts of the food system. He’s using the ‘LIFE’ (‘Land-cover change Impacts on Future Extinctions’) metric, developed by the team to calculate how changes in land use, such as deforestation or habitat restoration, are likely to affect the extinction risk of 30,875 terrestrial vertebrate species worldwide.
Dr Alison Eyres, a postdoctoral researcher in the Conservation Science Group in the University of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, used the metric to generate two maps showing the changes in the probability of terrestrial species extinction across the world in two scenarios. In the first, all remaining natural habitat is converted to farmland, and in the second all existing farmland is restored to its natural state.
While neither scenario is likely, at least in the short-term, the maps highlight the places in the world where mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles would suffer or benefit the most from these land-use changes – and it’s not evenly spread.
Hotspots show up in areas that are rich in biodiversity or because they are important for a particularly threatened or rare species.
“Some areas of the world, like northern Australia and New Guinea, have lots of endemic species and are largely untouched by human development. Other areas like Borneo have already suffered extensive forest loss. If people start clearing land for agriculture in those areas there will be a much bigger likelihood of driving species to extinction than clearing land in a place that’s relatively biodiversity poor, like Britain,” says Eyres.
She adds: “Although land restoration is important, the LIFE maps show the greater importance of preserving existing natural habitats to protect biodiversity, which can have bigger global-scale impacts than restoring areas we’ve already damaged.”
The novelty of the LIFE approach is that it measures extinction risk for all species.
Though species already heavily impacted by habitat loss are more vulnerable to further declines, unlike other approaches LIFE also considers species currently thought to be doing well.
The high resolution and scalability allow users to calculate the impacts of land-use change across areas from 0.5 to over 1,000 square kilometres.
LIFE also takes a long-term perspective – forecasting impacts over a 100-year timeframe to account for the way species populations slowly die out, or rebound, following human-driven changes to the way land is used.
Guiding policy decisions
While we may have a degree of choice over what we eat as individuals, the UK government is making big decisions about where to source the foods that appear in our shops.
Ball’s work with Dr Jonathan Green at the Stockholm Environment Institute and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) has resulted in the LIFE metric becoming part of the UK Government’s toolkit for measuring the global environmental impacts of the UK’s consumption of agricultural commodities.
They’ve pulled together national data on the consumption and provenance of 140 food types, and integrated this with the LIFE metric to quantify the impact that different trade and agricultural policies might have on global species extinction risk – the first time this has ever been done.
“When it comes to decisions about producing food it’s not enough to focus on one country in isolation,” says Ball.
“We have a UK agricultural policy that incentivises farmers to set aside more land for nature, and reduce food production. But if that means we’re making up the shortfall by relying on imports from more biodiverse places, it could cause far more damage to the species on our planet in the long run.”
In the UK our food ‘extinction footprint’ is almost entirely due to imports.
For example, beef produced in Australia and New Zealand, which is now being imported to Britain in much bigger quantities since Brexit, is thirty to forty times more likely to lead to species extinctions than beef produced in the UK and Ireland.
By considering the productivity of any piece of land, Ball can figure out the ‘per kilogramme impact’ of each commodity per year. He says that eating more vegetables and less meat, and cutting down on ‘luxury’ crops like chocolate and coffee, could free up significant areas of land for restoration and save hundreds of the world’s species from extinction.
A versatile tool
Thanks to its scalability, the LIFE metric can provide information to inform a huge range of actions – from individual dietary choices, to national policies, to global initiatives like the recent international commitment to conserve 30% of land area by 2030.
By combining LIFE with trade and economic data, it can help assess the extinction footprint of specific products or businesses, and the consequences of trade decisions.
Eyres has been working with conservation charities who are excited about using the metric to help them prioritise sites for conservation and analyse the impact of their work.
“Before we created the LIFE metric, if someone wanted to quantify the impact of a land-use change they’d have to do a very complicated, bespoke analysis requiring a lot of computational power and a lot of expertise.”
“Now it’s very simple to put a figure on the global change in extinction risk. It makes the information accessible to a huge diversity of people,” says Eyres.
Meanwhile, Ball says the biggest lever for changing our impact on species extinctions is what we eat.
If global land-use for agriculture doesn’t change, between 700 and 1,100 species of vertebrate are likely to go extinct in the next 100 years – and this is certainly an underestimate.
“LIFE tells us that eating beans and lentils is 150 times better for biodiversity than eating ruminant meat,” he says. “If everyone in the UK switched to a vegetarian diet overnight, we could halve our biodiversity impact.”
Reframing company accounts for people, planet and profit
By Kate Coghlan
The Centre for Climate Engagement (CCE) at Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge, is partnering with Social Value International (SVI) to support the True & Fair Project, bringing academic rigour to help directors, investors, and accounting bodies integrate sustainability into financial reporting.
Every day, businesses rely on natural and social resources like carbon, water and labour, many of which impose hidden costs on people and the planet. Yet financial accounts rarely reflect these externalities, leaving a gap between what a company is really costing society and what its balance sheet shows.
To bridge this gap, the True & Fair Project, led by SVI, aims to challenge the way financial profit is calculated by ensuring that dependencies and negative impacts (hidden costs) are recognised within financial statements, rather than being confined to a non-financial report. Now, CCE is joining forces with SVI to deepen the project’s legal, governance, and practical foundations.
Research focus
SVI’s True & Fair initiative began with a legal opinion (issued by George Bompas KC in 2024) that explored whether UK company directors already have a duty to incorporate sustainability considerations into accounts when such information is material.
The finding: yes, in many cases they do.
This implies that rather than just a “nice to have” in non-financial reporting, sustainability-related information may be essential to core financial statements. The collaboration with CCE explores how this principle intersects with the duties of directors, investors, accounting bodies, and regulators.
CCE brings legal, governance, and policy expertise, helping translate complex theory into practical guidance. As part of the collaboration, SVI and CCE are developing in-depth analysis and tailored guidance to inform key stakeholders, including directors, investors, accountants and lawyers to explore how the true and fair requirement applies to their work in the context of sustainability.
Key results
SVI has already published a guide for UK company directors on how to apply the “true & fair” requirement in the context of the company’s carbon emissions.
The new collaboration extends the agenda: CCE and SVI are co-developing deeper analysis and tailored guidance examining the role of other stakeholders including investors, accounting bodies, and legal advisors.
Together, they are considering how a range of legal obligations interact with the core ‘true and fair’ requirement, exploring how to leverage these obligations to better reflect sustainability issues in financial accounts.
“We are excited to support SVI’s campaign to ensure sustainability is integrated in financial reporting … and contribute to practical resources which help businesses and investors navigate legal and governance complexities.”
Nick Scott Manager of the Law and Climate Programme at CCE
Photo of Nick Scott
Challenges, Next Steps, and Impact
One challenge is bridging legal theory and boardroom practice. Directors may struggle to know when sustainability is material and how to represent it. The true and fair requirement applies not only in the UK but also in the EU, most Commonwealth countries, and beyond. Another challenge, therefore, is to ensure that the guidance is practically relevant across different sectors and jurisdictions.
Next steps include producing detailed stakeholder-specific guidance, mapping engagement opportunities with accounting bodies and regulators, and creating case studies to prove the concept. CCE and SVI will also communicate widely, to boards, auditors, investors, and others, to raise awareness of the true and fair requirement and the True & Fair Project’s aims.
This collaboration could shift the rules of corporate accountability — making sustainability disclosures a norm in core financial statements. It could better align board incentives with sustainability goals, aid investors in risk assessment, and embed climate considerations into the foundation of corporate governance.
It’s been decades since we came up with new treatments for these pervasive conditions. The ones we have can bring unwanted effects. For some people, existing treatments don’t work at all.
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy (PAT) offers a new approach. Its 50-60% early success rates are remarkably high. This is a different kind of treatment, where patients explore underlying trauma in intensive therapeutic sessions – but do not need daily medication.
PAT is now providing hope for treating conditions we currently have limited options for, like treatment-resistant depression, severe post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anorexia or substance use disorders.
Researchers are coming together to explore this early promise: determining which therapies and compounds work best for different conditions, and unpicking the biological mechanisms behind their profound effects.
Here is Dr Liliana Galindo (Lili). She is Colombian born, softly spoken, and infinitely curious.
Lili is an Affiliated Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Principal Investigator of the CPRG. She splits her time between medical research and her clinical role as a Consultant Psychiatrist for the local NHS trust.
“I’ve always been fascinated by our mind’s capability to generate altered states,” says Lili. “Minds allow us to perceive the world, to be creative and to dream. But they can also create nightmares and distortions of reality.”
Lili started to study psychoactive substances, including psychedelics, in Spain. When she arrived in Cambridge in 2018, she was interested in how psychedelics might help us overcome mental challenges. But to start answering these questions, she needed a team.
Testing the safety and efficacy of psychedelic substances is a big operation. You need therapists, medics, psychiatrists, pharmacists, nurses and clinical research practitioners.
Lili helped gather these experts into what became the CPRG, a three-way partnership between the University, the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
After obtaining their Home Office license to study psychoactive substances in 2023, the group set up their first trial for PTSD.
Since then, the group has moved to develop a wide range of trials. This year will see the group trialling psilocybin-assisted therapy for generalised anxiety disorder and treatment-resistant depression.
Across all the trials so far, Lili’s group reports that the treatments are well tolerated, with no risks or reports of substance misuse afterwards.
The clinical approach appears to be working. But how are these treatments so powerful, and what do they involve?
It’s time to meet the group’s most mysterious members: the psychedelic compounds.
Meet the molecules
Empathogens, such as MDMA, promote empathy and compassion. They can be a useful method for revisiting past traumas without fear and anxiety, offering a different point of view – hence their usefulness in tackling PTSD.
Where patients feel overwhelmed by fear and pain, empathogens can let them reframe and reprocess trauma. They might feel a new compassion for themselves, or come across unlikely positive reflections, such as ‘this painful experience made me stronger’.
Evidence suggests that psychedelics may also be neuroplastogens – meaning they promote neuroplasticity and flexible cognition. As such, substances like LSD, 5 -MeO-DMT and psilocybin seem a good fit for escaping the rigid negative mindset of depression or anxiety.
Lili says, “Our thoughts and feelings affect how we perceive the world. Mental health conditions constitute an undue narrowing of experience. These molecules help people increase the number of ways they can perceive reality.”
Some have compared the effects of psychedelics to religious or spiritual transcendence.
These immunological changes are what the CPRG’s Dr Mary-Ellen Lynall and PhD student Richard Dear are currently investigating, in their study with psilocybin.
Richard says, “Psilocybin affects the immune system, and the immune system is involved in mental illness, so perhaps immune effects will help explain why psychedelic assisted therapy is so effective. It is very exciting to be one of the first groups to investigate this hypothesis.”
“It is so exciting to see work in this area take off in Cambridge.”
Professor Tamsin Ford, Head of the Department of Psychiatry
Your guide to Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy
PAT is delivered over 3 phases.
The preparation phase with a trained therapist can last a few hours. It includes a conversation covering the patient’s history, what they are aiming to address, and what their symptoms are.
This session prepares people for what they might experience during the psychedelic phase. It gives them tools for how to cope with any adverse emotional or physical effects, and helps them avoid becoming overwhelmed. The psychologist also sets down the rules and boundaries of the session, to ensure the patient’s safety.
Next up is the dosing session, where the patient is supervised under the effects of the drug.
For this phase, Lili and her team have transformed a clinical room in Addenbrooke’s Hospital into a welcoming, relaxing space.
The dosing room in the NIHR Clinical Research Facility at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.
This comforting setting helps to increase the likelihood of a positive experience. Patients will be in there a while – depending on the compound, sessions can last between 6 to 8 hours. For all that time, they are under medical supervision and accompanied by a trained therapist.
In many of the current trials, Lili’s team uses ‘inner directed therapy’. Here, the therapist is more like a co-pilot than a guide, letting the patient direct the session in a way that feels right to them.
Lili says, “I’ve had the opportunity to be the therapist in these sessions. It’s really intense and beautiful. Our job in that scenario is not to intervene, but to listen and support.”
Finally, and crucially, comes the integration session. These typically take place the day after dosing, giving the patient time to process and consolidate the experience.
“In these sessions, we sit with the patient and go through what happened,” Lili says. “We support them while they make sense of their experience. They can then integrate these insights into the life they return to.”
Reflecting on their experience of PAT, one participant in an empathogen trial said, “I’d looked at the proposed psychedelic drug trials with apprehension, but was eager to be involved with experiencing a less intensive psychoactive substance.
“Moving through different phases of the study gave me a chance to better explore ‘inner directed therapy’. One of my biggest takeaways is how critical the integrative aspects of PAT will be for future participants to fully experience the neuroplastic effects of these substances.”
Making connections
More people are starting to recognise PAT’s incredible potential.
Earlier this year, CPRG held their first research day, with over 150 people attending. The day was open to academics, clinicians and psychedelic experts from across the UK.
Speakers and attendees at the Cambridge Psychedelic Research Day 2025. Credit: William Blakesley-Herbert.
Speakers and attendees at the Cambridge Psychedelic Research Day 2025. Credit: William Blakesley-Herbert.
Speakers and attendees at the Cambridge Psychedelic Research Day 2025. Credit: William Blakesley-Herbert.
Benjamin Illingworth, PhD student, psychiatrist and CPRG member says, “We want to make sure that these treatments are available to everyone who could benefit. If we don’t create open, expert spaces in which to discuss them, that won’t happen.”
Lili goes further: “Psychedelic therapy shouldn’t be something available only to an elite few who can afford it. These treatments can effectively alleviate mental suffering.
“We are looking for ways to integrate them into the public health system. Our guiding principle is: how can we bring these treatments to the people who need them the most?”
The CPRG are building an evidence base to begin this integration. More clinical trials are in the pipeline for 2026, including a trial of group therapy – where multiple people can receive PAT at the same time.
There are reasons to think PAT will be cost effective for public health systems. Instead of administering existing treatments (therapy and antidepressants) for years, with questionable success rates, PAT is an intense, shorter intervention that tackles the root problem instead of just the symptoms. The hope is that people can fully recover. And if people can join PAT in groups, the clinical team can support many people at once.
Elsewhere in the CPRG, PhD student Anya Ragnhildstveit is collecting experiences and data from people around the world who have received PAT. By bringing together this early evidence, she aims to inform the development of future treatments and shape the design of clinical trials.
“There are so many exciting developments coming,” Lili says.
Lili’s enthusiasm is mirrored by Professor Tamsin Ford, Head of the Department of Psychiatry, who says: “It is so exciting to see work in this area take off in Cambridge.”
These fledgling connections are just the start. With its world-renowned neuroscientists, clinicians and psychiatrists, Cambridge provides the perfect meeting place for experts to refine their ideas and shape the treatments of the future.
If you’d like to support the CPRG in providing MDMA-assisted treatments to wounded veterans, you might like to consider making a donation.
Published on 29 October 2025.
The text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
Members of the Business and Trade Select Committee visited Cambridge on 27 October, at the start of their annual programme of engagement around the UK, which this year is focused on identifying priorities for driving economic growth.
It’s people that drive world-leading innovation, and create a system that drives through into creating the companies for the future that are not just scale-ups, but world-beaters.Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP
Liam Byrne MP, Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, and his colleagues Charlie Maynard MP (Witney), John Cooper MP (Dumfries and Galloway), Sarah Edwards MP (Tamworth) and Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner drew on expertise in the room to develop potential areas of focus for their programme of work in 2026.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Deborah Prentice, welcomed the Committee to Cambridge and reflected on the new government announcements highlighting the Oxford to Cambridge Corridor as a key focus for strengthening the UK’s global position as a leader in science and technology.
Hosted at the Ray Dolby Centre, home of the Cavendish Laboratory, Committee members met with around 30 senior academics, business leaders, and investors representing a range of sectors across the Cambridge innovation ecosystem. The session provided an opportunity for open discussion about what is needed to keep the UK at the forefront of global research and enterprise.
Business and Trade Select Committee visit Cambridge1 of 3
A central theme of the discussion was how to attract and retain world-class talent. Participants emphasised the importance of investing in opportunities for the best global graduates to undertake PhDs in the UK, supported by a competitive and welcoming visa system. Access to finance was another key focus, with contributors exploring how to help spin outs and scale-ups grow through improved access to capital and foreign direct investment. Attendees also underlined the critical role of infrastructure, from housing and transport to water and energy systems, in ensuring regions like Cambridge can continue to grow sustainably and support frontier industries.
Overall, the session conveyed strong optimism about the opportunities presented by high-growth sectors such as life sciences, technology, and advanced manufacturing. It also highlighted Cambridge’s position as a global leader in transformative fields including artificial intelligence and quantum engineering.
Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP, Chair of the Business and Trade Committee said, “We had a brilliant first session in Cambridge with lots of people from across this extraordinary innovation ecosystem – they’ve got a lot of things right here, not least the Innovate Cambridge model.
“The big overriding issue that’s come out today is making sure that the UK, including through places like this, is a place where you can access world class talent – because of course it’s people that drive world-leading innovation, and create a system that drives through into creating the companies for the future that are not just scale-ups, but world-beaters.”
Jonny Davidson, Senior Business Development Manager, of Riverlane said, “I was delighted to meet with members of the Business and Trade Committee, alongside partners in the city, to hear about the success, and opportunities, here in Cambridge. We discussed how Riverlane, a global leader in quantum error correction technology, is a national success story, driving advances in quantum computing, and economic growth. For companies like Riverlane, continued investment in science and infrastructure and a financial system that rewards long-term growth will be key to helping Cambridge and the wider UK remain a world leader in advanced technologies.”
Is your ultra-high-definition television really worth it? Do you need a 4K or an 8K screen to get the best viewing experience at home?
According to researchers at the University of Cambridge and Meta Reality Labs, the human eye has a resolution limit: in other words, there are only so many pixels the eye can see. Above this limit, a screen gives our eyes more information than they can detect.
To calculate the resolution limit, the researchers conducted a study that measured participants’ ability to detect specific features in colour and greyscale images on a screen, whether looking at the images straight on or through their peripheral vision, and when the screen was close to them or further away.
The precise resolution limit depends on a number of variables, including the size of the screen, the darkness of the room, and the distance between the viewer and the screen. However, for an average-size UK living room, with 2.5 metres between the TV and the sofa, a 44-inch 4K or 8K TV would not provide any additional benefit over a lower resolution Quad HD (QHD) TV of the same size.
Any consumer buying a new TV is bombarded with technical information from manufacturers, all trying to persuade them that the display resolution of their screens – whether Full HD, 4K or 8K – offers them the best viewing experience.
And display resolution is considered equally important for the many other screens we use, on our phones or computers, whether we’re using them to take pictures, watch films or play video games, including games in virtual or augmented reality. Even car manufacturers are offering higher and higher resolutions for in-car information displays and satnav screens.
“As large engineering efforts go towards improving the resolution of mobile, AR and VR displays, it’s important to know the maximum resolution at which further improvements bring no noticeable benefit,” said first author Dr Maliha Ashraf from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “But there have been no studies that actually measure what it is that the human eye can see, and what the limitations of its perception are.”
“If you have more pixels in your display, it’s less efficient, it costs more and it requires more processing power to drive it,” said co-author Professor Rafał Mantiuk, also from Cambridge’s Department of Computer Science and Technology. “So we wanted to know the point at which it makes no sense to further improve the resolution of the display.”
The researchers created an experimental set-up with a sliding display that allowed them to measure exactly what the human eye can see when looking at patterns on a screen. Instead of measuring the specifications of a particular screen, they measured pixels per degree (PPD): a measurement of how many individual pixels can fit into a one-degree slice of your field of vision. Measuring PPD helps answer a more useful question than ‘how high is the resolution of this screen?’ Instead, it answers the question ‘how does this screen look from where I’m sitting?’
The widely accepted 20/20 vision standard, based on the Snellen chart that will be familiar to anyone who has ever had their vision checked, suggests that the human eye can resolve detail at 60 pixels per degree.
“This measurement has been widely accepted, but no one had actually sat down and measured it for modern displays, rather than a wall chart of letters that was first developed in the 19th century,” said Ashraf.
Participants in the study looked at patterns with very fine gradations, in shades of grey and in colour, and were asked whether they were able to see the lines in the image. The screen was moved towards and away from the viewer to measure PPD at different distances. PPD was also measured for central and peripheral vision.
The researchers discovered that the eye’s resolution limit is higher than previously believed, but that there are important differences in resolution limits between colour and black-and-white. For greyscale images viewed straight on, the average was 94 PPD. For red and green patterns, the number was 89 PPD, and for yellow and violet, it was 53 PPD.
“Our brain doesn’t actually have the capacity to sense details in colour very well, which is why we saw a big drop-off for colour images, especially when viewed in peripheral vision,” said Mantiuk. “Our eyes are essentially sensors that aren’t all that great, but our brain processes that data into what it thinks we should be seeing.”
The researchers modelled their results to calculate how the resolution limit varies across the population, which will help manufacturers make decisions that are relevant for the majority of the population: for example, designing a display which has retinal resolution for 95% of people rather than an average observer.
Based on this modelling, the researchers developed their online calculator, which enables people to test their own screens or help inform future buying decisions.
“Our results set the north star for display development, with implications for future imaging, rendering and video coding technologies,” said co-author Dr Alex Chapiro from Meta Reality Labs.
The United Nations has selected a University of Cambridge student as a Young Leader for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Every two years, the United Nations Youth Office recognises 17 exceptional young changemakers who are driving solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges and whose leadership is helping to advance the achievement of the SDGs.
Tanatswa Amanda Chikaura, 26, from Zimbabwe, is a Hughes Hall PhD candidate under the supervision of Dr Elizabeth Weir and Professor Tamsin Ford. Her research interests are centred on autism, mental health and suicide prevention. In addition to her academic pursuits, Tanatswa is the Founder and Director of Ndinewe Foundation, a mental health organisation in Zimbabwe.
Tanatswa said: “Young people are everywhere and sometimes it takes a fellow youth to understand another’s needs. “We have the ideas, solutions, creativity and so much more to add to the development of our nations. Youth leadership gives hope and inspiration to all. We are not only the future of tomorrow but the leaders of today.”
Her supervisor Dr Weir said: “I’m delighted that Tanatswa has been selected as one of 17 Young Leaders for the SDGs. There were over 33,000 applicants for the cohort from more than 150 countries and Tanatswa will work with the UN over the next two years in this role. “She has been selected for this prestigious cohort on the basis of her impactful PhD scholarship on the relationship between trauma and suicidality among autistic people, as well as her ongoing work as the founder of the Ndinewe Foundation in Zimbabwe.”
The announcement was made on United Nations Day, on 24 October, which marks the date when the United Nations officially came into being.
Hundreds of experts working on AI in education gathered for the first ever Connecting Cambridge event at Cambridge University Press & Assessment’s headquarters on 21 October.
Helena Renfrew Knight, Chief Strategy Officer of Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and Professor Bhaskar Vira, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Education at Cambridge University, welcomed teams working on AI to share knowledge and innovation, and identify areas for future collaboration.
Experts across Cambridge are navigating the opportunities and challenges of AI-enabled technology in education and publishing, underpinned by a human-first approach to transformation and a shared commitment to delivering on the University’s mission to contribute to society.
Caretaker and senior woman using digital tablet at nursing home – stock photo Credit: Maskot (Getty Images)
Problems with the brain’s waste clearance system could underlie many cases of dementia and help explain why poor sleep patterns and cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure increase the risk of dementia.
Treating high blood pressure or encouraging people to stop smoking would be an achievable way to helping the glymphatic system work betterHugh Markus
A study led by researchers at the University of Cambridge found that impaired movement of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) – the clear liquid that cushions and cleans the brain – predicted risk of dementia later in life among 40,000 adults recruited to UK Biobank. Their findings are published today in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association and are being presented at the World Stroke Congress 2025 in Barcelona.
In the healthy brain, the so-called glymphatic system serves to clear out toxins and waste materials, keeping the brain healthy. Only discovered as recently as 2012, this system functions by flushing CSF through the brain along tiny channels around blood vessels known as perivascular spaces. It collects waste then drains out of the brain, helping keep it clean and healthy.
The glymphatic system is thought to be important in protecting against many of the common forms of dementia, which are often characterised by the build-up of toxic substances in the brain – for example, Alzheimer’s disease sees amyloid ‘plaques’ and tau ‘tangles accumulate in brain tissue.
One of the most common forms of dementia is vascular dementia, caused by reduced blood flow to the brain. The most common cause of this type of dementia is cerebral small vessel disease, which affects the small blood vessels in the brain. But the impact of cerebral small vessel disease is even greater because it also interacts with other dementias making them worse; for example, a study of nuns in the US found that among those nuns whose brains showed signs of Alzheimer’s disease post mortem, only around a half exhibited symptoms of dementia – but this increased to around nine in 10 if they also had cerebral small vessel disease.
Professor Hugh Markus and colleagues at the University of Cambridge wanted to see whether cerebral small vessel disease and other cardiovascular risk factors damage the glymphatic system – and whether this in turn increases the risk of dementia.
Until recently, it has only been possible to study glymphatic function in mice, but recent advances in MRI scanning have made it possible to study it indirectly in humans. Even so, it was only possible to do this practically in relatively small numbers, but Yutong Chen, while a medical student at the University of Cambridge, developed machine learning algorithms capable of assessing glymphatic functions from MRI scans at scale.
The team applied the algorithm to MRI scans taken from around 40,000 adults in UK Biobank. They found three biomarkers – biological signatures – associated with impaired glymphatic function assessed at baseline, predicted the risk of dementia occurring over the subsequent decade. One of these was DTI-ALPS, a measure of the diffusion of water molecules along the perivascular spaces. Another was the size of the choroid plexus, where the CSF is produced. The third measure reflected the flow velocity of CSF into the brain.
Yutong Chen, from the Department of Clinical Neurosciences at Cambridge, said: “Although we have to be cautious about indirect markers, our work provides good evidence in a very large cohort that disruption of the glymphatic system plays a role in dementia. This is exciting because it allows to ask: how can we improve this?”
Further analysis showed that several cardiovascular risk factors impaired glymphatic function – and hence increased dementia risk, and that this was partly via causing cerebral small vessel disease, which is visible in the MRI scans.
First author Hui Hong, now a radiologist at the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, said: “We already have evidence that small vessel disease in the brain accelerates diseases like Alzheimer’s, and now we have a likely explanation why. Disruption to the glymphatic system is likely to impair our ability to clear the brain of the amyloid and tau that causes Alzheimer’s disease.”
The research suggests possible approaches for reducing dementia risk. One is to look at strategies for improving glymphatic function. Sleep plays an important role in glymphatic function, and so disrupted sleep patterns are likely to impair its ability to clear toxins. Alternatively, there may be existing medicines that could be repurposed, or new ones that could be developed, to improve glymphatic function.
Another possible approach is to treat vascular risk factors such as high blood pressure. This is supported by recent studies: the SPRINT MIND trial, for example, showed that intensive blood pressure control (maintaining a systolic blood pressure of less than 120 mm Hg) led to a 20% reduction in cognitive decline or dementia compared to participants in the standard treatment group.
Professor Markus, who leads the Stroke Research Group at the University of Cambridge and is a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, said: “We already know the importance of cardiovascular risk factors when it comes to dementia, and our findings further emphasise this link.
“At least a quarter of all dementia risk is accounted for by common risk factors like blood pressure and smoking. If these impair glymphatic function, then we can intervene. Treating high blood pressure or encouraging people to stop smoking would be an achievable way to helping the glymphatic system work better.”
Professor Bryan Williams, Chief Scientific and Medical Officer at the British Heart Foundation, said: “This study offers us a fascinating glimpse into how problems with the brain’s waste clearance system could be quietly increasing the chances of developing dementia later in life. By improving our understanding of the glymphatic system, this study opens exciting new avenues for research to treat and prevent dementia. It also emphasises the importance of managing known cardiovascular risk factors, such as high blood pressure, for reducing dementia risk.”
The research was funded by the British Heart Foundation, with additional support from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
The 10 organisations in Great Britain that carry out the highest number of animal procedures – those used in medical, veterinary and scientific research – have released their annual statistics today.
Animal research… is an essential step in the development of new medicines, vaccines and treatments for both humans and animals.Jon Simons
The statistics for the University of Cambridge are available on our website as part of our ongoing commitment to transparency and openness around the use of animals in research.
This coincides with the publication of the Home Office report on the statistics of scientific procedures on living animals in Great Britain in 2024.
The 10 organisations are listed below alongside the total number of procedures they carried out on animals for scientific research in Great Britain in 2024. Of these 1,379,399 procedures, more than 99% were carried out on mice, fish, rats, and birds and 82% were classified as causing pain equivalent to, or less than, an injection.
This is the tenth consecutive year that organisations have come together to publicise their collective statistics and examples of their research.
Organisation
Number of Procedures (2024)
The Francis Crick Institute
200,055
University of Oxford
199,730
University of Cambridge
190,448
UCL
175,687
Medical Research Council
140,602
University of Edinburgh
136,862
King’s College London
106,300
University of Glasgow
99,509
University of Manchester
81,252
Imperial College London
48,954
TOTAL
1,379,399
In total, 72 organisations have voluntarily published their 2024 animal research statistics.
All organisations are committed to the ethical framework called the ‘3Rs’ of replacement, reduction and refinement. This means avoiding or replacing the use of animals where possible, minimising the number of animals used per experiment and optimising the experience of the animals to improve animal welfare. However, as institutions expand and conduct more research, the total number of animals used can rise even if fewer animals are used per study.
All organisations listed are signatories to the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK, which commits them to being more open about the use of animals in scientific, medical and veterinary research in the UK. More than 130 organisations have signed the Concordat, including UK universities, medical research charities, research funders, learned societies and commercial research organisations.
Wendy Jarrett, Chief Executive of Understanding Animal Research, which developed the Concordat on Openness, said: “Animal research remains a small but vital part of the quest for new medicines, vaccines and treatments for humans and animals. Alternative methods are increasingly being phased in, but, until we have sufficient reliable alternatives available, it is important that organisations that use animals in research maintain the public’s trust in them. By providing this level of information about the numbers of animals used, and the experience of those animals, as well as details of the medical breakthroughs that derive from this research, these Concordat signatories are helping the public to make up their own minds about how they feel about the use of animals in scientific research in Great Britain.”
Professor Jon Simons, Head of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Cambridge, said: “Animal research remains critical for understanding complex biological systems and is an essential step in the development of new medicines, vaccines and treatments for both humans and animals. We are committed to continuing to reduce the number of animals used in biomedical research, and our scientists are actively working on new methods and techniques that will provide robust scientific alternatives.”
CASE STUDY: Mice are vital in the search for effective new dementia treatments
Cambridge researchers are leading drug discovery to develop safer, more effective treatments for the millions of people affected by Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
“Dementia has often been viewed as something that happens normally as people age, but it’s not. It’s a disease that we need to treat, so that people can live well and stay independent in later life,” said David Harrison. “But many pharmaceutical companies have lost confidence in working in this area because the risk of failure is too great.”
With expertise in drug discovery, Harrison’s team at Cambridge’s ALBORADA Drug Discovery Institute is designing and making chemical molecules – the basis of future drugs – and testing whether they work on novel targets in the body. The aim is to develop these ideas to the point where pharmaceutical partners can more confidently take things forward.
While the team routinely uses test-tube and computer-based models, animal models are vital in understanding how the many different cell types in the brain interact together in disease.
They’re also vital in understanding how potential drugs are metabolised and distributed throughout the body, and in looking for any adverse effects that may occur in other tissues.
Harrison said: “Almost one million people are estimated to be living with dementia in the UK. We need to find better treatment options. The animals we use are an essential part of the drug discovery process – they could help us change people’s lives.”
The Cambridge Innovation Hub has received cornerstone Government funding of at least £15 million to maintain the city’s position as a global leader in innovation.
The world is coming to Cambridge for science. Government support means that work will now start at pace to make the Innovation Hub a reality.Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor
Designed to drive UK growth, the Hub will connect entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and researchers on a 2.7-acre site in Hills Road, in the centre of Cambridge, as the UK’s answer to Boston’s Lab Central and Paris’s Station F. The new facility will support science start ups to grow and compete on the world stage.
The announcement was made as the annual Innovate Cambridge Summit brings together entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers and political leaders this week, and is part of a £500 million growth package for new homes, infrastructure and business space for the Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor.
It follows a new report that reveals the Cambridge area is now the most investible hub for science, and has had the highest growth of any UK region outside the capital in the last decade.
According to the new report from Beauhurst, Cambridge Enterprise, Innovate Cambridge and Cambridge Innovation Capital, Cambridge is a national economic asset where early-stage life sciences and deep tech companies have raised £7.9billion since 2015. International investors are now involved in nearly 40% of all deals, up from just 7% a decade ago.
Cambridge’s innovation ecosystem has grown by almost 80% in the past decade, from 473 active companies in 2015 to 848 in 2025. Its spinout companies, born from University research, are powering this momentum, with spinouts accounting for 27.9% of all equity raised in the region. Total spinout investment has grown from £46 million in 2015 to £879 million in 2024, with life science spinouts raising an average of £8.4 million each in 2024, the highest for any UK city.
This growth and success have been embodied by Cambridge-born success stories, including CellCentric, a leading clinical-stage biotech developing novel cancer therapeutics; CuspAI, an AI-driven materials discovery company; and Featurespace, a world leader in adaptive behavioural analytics for financial crime prevention.
Science Minister and Oxford-Cambridge Innovation Champion, Lord Vallance, said: “Cambridge is one of the world’s most fertile grounds for innovation to take root, and blossom into opportunities for investment, job creation, and progress in fields ranging from life sciences to deep tech.
“As impressive as these figures are, there is still more potential here for us to unleash. This is precisely why we are backing the Cambridge Innovation Hub, as part of our programme of work across Government to boost the entire Oxford to Cambridge Growth Corridor, and fulfil its promise as an economic engine the whole nation benefits from.”
Professor Deborah Prentice, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: “Fast-tracking the Innovation Hub will help drive UK growth. It will connect entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and our world-class researchers. It will quickly become Europe’s leading destination for early-stage deep tech and life sciences companies, and means Cambridge will continue to be a global leader in research and innovation. The world is coming to Cambridge for science. Government support means that work will now start at pace to make the Innovation Hub a reality.”
Professor Andy Neely OBE, Chair of Innovate Cambridge, said: “Cambridge’s science and innovation ecosystem is one of the UK’s greatest economic assets. The data shows that the world is increasingly looking to Cambridge to find the breakthrough ideas that can change lives and drive global progress.”
Dr Kathryn Chapman, Executive Director, Innovate Cambridge, said: “The Summit is a chance to demonstrate how Cambridge continues to lead on innovation worldwide. Recognition as the fastest-growing UK hub for science investment, combined with cornerstone funding for a new international innovation hub, reflects the success of our unified vision and commitment to building a truly global innovation economy.”
This latest report follows Dealroom data published earlier this year which showed Cambridge was #1 in Europe for deep tech VC per capita, and was second globally to only the Bay Area when it came to unicorns per capita.
Girl takes exam in a London secondary school. Credit: Caia images/Getty
A new book warns that the school system may be “broken beyond repair”, claiming that it is deepening inequality and making children ill.
We are crying out for systemic transformation: a completely new vision of what education involves, however challenging that may beHilary Cremin
In Rewilding Education, Professor Hilary Cremin argues that modern schooling is defined by an obsession with standardisation and outdated thinking, while it fails to nurture creativity, critical thought, or the physical and mental health of students and teachers.
Cremin, who is Head of the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, draws on decades of experience as a teacher, academic and consultant – as well as the work of other scholars – to put forward a programme for “long-term, radical change”, including a stronger focus on students’ social and emotional development alongside academic achievement.
The book’s numerous proposals include more lessons outdoors, and more projects that connect students to their communities beyond the school gates. Steps such as these, she argues, would help prepare young people to live responsibly – and well – in a rapidly changing world.
Cremin acknowledges that these ideas may be disparaged by traditionalists and policy-makers – as, indeed, they have been before. In 2013, she was one of 100 academic critics of Michael Gove’s educational reforms whom the then Education Secretary branded “enemies of promise”.
More than a decade later, she argues, there is still no evidence that those reforms, like many before and since, have narrowed the attainment gap between wealthy and poorer students as promised. Research shows that the gap widens throughout school, reaching the equivalent of more than 19 months of learning by the end of secondary education.
“Despite decades of reform, I think the school system as we presently configure it may be beyond redemption,” Cremin said. “This isn’t an attack on the idea of education, or on the thousands of brilliant teachers who give the job their all. But government after government has tinkered with education when the basic model is obsolete.”
“If we keep preparing children for the second half of the 21st century using a system designed in the 19th, it could do catastrophic harm. We need to rethink what it means to educate, and what we are educating for.”
Rewilding Education challenges the ‘myth of social mobility’, arguing that education functions more as a sorting mechanism than a levelling force. High-performing school still admit disproportionately few disadvantaged young people, and poverty remains the strongest available predictor of student outcomes.
The chimerical belief persists that good grades will secure students a better future. “None of the ideas driving schools policy really stands up to scrutiny,” Cremin writes, “yet this hardly seems to matter”.
Cremin contends that schools often resemble outdated, factory-style production lines: rigid, standardised and with sometimes militaristic discipline. This, she suggests, suppresses curiosity, discourages critical thinking and disempowers teachers.
Her critique of the effects on physical and mental health is particularly urgent. Cremin argues that schools are making students and teachers ill. She presents evidence linking the loss of physical education and the sale of school playing fields to rising childhood obesity, and notes that even basic needs – such as access to adequate toilet facilities – often go unmet.
High-stakes testing, she adds, is fuelling poor mental health, while zero-tolerance behaviour policies have driven a 60% rise in permanent exclusions since 2015, with disadvantaged students four times more likely to be excluded. Students and teachers, she suggests, sometimes turn to medication to cope with an “ailing system”.
This bleak reality, she argues, demands more than incremental reform. The book calls for a new educational model for a new kind of future – one shaped by the climate crisis, downward mobility, Generative AI and post-truth politics. “We are educating for jobs and lifestyles that will soon cease to exist,” Cremin writes, “while failing to educate for those that don’t yet exist.”
This leads Cremin to call for education to be ‘rewilded’ – a metaphor drawn from ecological restoration. In schools, it implies letting go of rigid, one-size-fits-all structures, and allowing less predictable and more holistic forms of learning to emerge.
Nature plays a central role in her vision. Drawing on thinkers like Rabindranath Tagore, Cremin argues that schools should treat the natural world as a “co-educator”. She encourages outdoor and experience-based learning and suggests that even small changes – like planting trees, creating school gardens or nature-inspired arts activities – could help foster greater respect for the environment.
Rewilding Education also urges a rebalancing towards project-based learning, the arts and civic engagement. Students, Cremin argues, must learn not only to reproduce knowledge, but to act with wisdom and care, and to think critically about complex problems. This requires education for “body, mind, heart and soul”.
She proposes, for example, giving students time to walk and reflect when grappling with difficult questions, and highlights research linking later start times for adolescents – who have different sleep patterns – to better performance and wellbeing. She also champions mindfulness and ‘metacognitive’ approaches, that help children reflect on how they are thinking while they are learning.
In a chapter Cremin anticipates critics will deliberately misread, she calls for greater trust and deeper relationships between teachers and students. Risk aversion in schools, she argues, has counter-intuitively made it harder for teachers to care and support pupils, in favour of rule enforcement and teaching facts.
The book draws on examples from the UK, India, Germany and the US to show how ‘rewilding’ is not just possible, but already happening, in some schools that emphasise education for togetherness, harmony and wellbeing. “Something fundamental needs to change,” Cremin added. “We are crying out for systemic transformation: a completely new vision of what education involves, however challenging that may be.”
Dr Nick Cunniffe running a “visual evoked potential” test with a trial participant in the Cambridge Clinical Vision Laboratory. Credit: MS Society
Scientists behind the trial say they are “on the brink of a new class of treatments” and that the findings take us another step closer to stopping disease progression in MS.
My instinct is that we are on the brink of a new class of treatments to stop MS progressionDr Nick Cunniffe
A combination of metformin, a common diabetes drug, and clemastine, an antihistamine, can help repair myelin – the protective coating around nerves, which gets damaged in multiple sclerosis (MS) causing symptoms like fatigue, pain, spasms and problems with walking.
This is according to early findings from the phase two clinical trial, CCMR-Two, carried out by researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Clinical Neurosciences, and funded by the MS Society.
The scientists say the results take us another step closer to finally being able to stop disease progression in MS. However, they stress that people should not attempt to acquire the drugs outside a clinical trial, as further research is needed to fully understand their efficacy and safety in MS.
Previous evidence from animal studies showed that metformin enhances the effect of clemastine on myelin repair, but until now the two drugs had never been tested together in people. News of the latest trial was presented today at this year’s European Committee for Treatment and Research in Multiple Sclerosis (ECTRIMS) – one of the world’s biggest MS research conferences.
“I am increasingly sure that remyelination is part of the solution to stopping progressive disability in MS,” said Dr Nick Cunniffe, a clinical lecturer in Neurology at Cambridge, who led the CCMR-Two trial.
“We still need to research the long-term benefits and side effects before people with MS consider taking these drugs. But my instinct is that we are on the brink of a new class of treatments to stop MS progression, and within the next decade we could see the first licensed treatment that repairs myelin and improves the lives of people living with MS.”
Over 150,000 people live with MS in the UK. While there are around 20 disease-modifying therapies for people with relapsing MS, and some emerging for active progressive MS, tens of thousands of people remain without effective treatment.
Those drugs that do exist only work on one aspect of the condition – the immune system. They don’t stop the gradual nerve damage that leads to long-term disability. Scientists say that protecting nerves from damage by boosting the body’s natural ability to put myelin back onto nerves could offer a way forward.
“We desperately need ways to protect nerves from damage and repair lost myelin, and this research gives us real hope that myelin repair drugs will be part of the armoury of MS treatments in the future,” said Dr Emma Gray, Director of Research at the MS Society. “These results are truly exciting, and could represent a turning point in the way MS is treated.”
Some 70 people with relapsing MS took part in the trials for six months, half of whom took the drug combination and half took a placebo. The primary outcome used to gauge the effectiveness of the drug was a ‘visual evoked potential’ test, which measures how quickly signals travel between the eyes and the brain. The speed of signals slowed down in the placebo group over the course of six months, but remained constant in the drug group.
While the primary outcome was positive, scientists point out that people did not feel better on the drugs. The benefit from myelin repair is to insulate and protect damaged nerves, preventing them from degenerating over years. Researchers believe that drugs that promote remyelination will have an effect on disability in the long term, which will be the subject of further research.
Researchers argue that MS is just the beginning. Finding ways to protect the brain before irreversible damage sets in is vital across all neurodegenerative conditions, from Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s. These diseases collectively cost the UK hundreds of billions and place an enormous burden on the NHS and carers.
Hannah Threlfell, 43, from Abington was diagnosed with relapsing MS in 2019 after experiencing optic neuritis. She joined the CCMR-Two trial in the hope she could help future generations.
“Before I was diagnosed, I sat through a talk from MS specialist Professor Alasdair Coles about groundbreaking MS research. Even though I didn’t know I had it then, I remember thinking how incredible it was that so much had been achieved. And now I have MS, joining the trial was a no brainer,” said Threlfall, a former teacher who has recently become a curate.
“I love helping and I know being on this trial will make a difference to someone else in the future – even small ripples have long-lasting effects! This research gives me even more reason to believe that in my lifetime everyone with MS will have treatments that work for them.”
CCMR-Two is being funded by donations to the MS Society’s Stop MS Appeal. The appeal hopes to raise £100 million by the end of 2025 to help find treatments that could slow or stop the build-up of disability for everyone with MS.
Celebrations at the University of Cambridge honour the life, work and legacy of Sir Robert Edwards, whose work revolutionised fertility treatment through the invention of in vitro fertilisation.
Scientists studying human reproduction at the University of Cambridge today are building on Sir Bob Edwards’ incredible legacy.Kathy Niakan
A Nobel prize-winner and one of the most influential scientists of the twentieth century, Edwards spent much of his career in the Department of Physiology at the University of Cambridge.
Together with gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and technician and embryologist Jean Purdy, Edwards pioneered the technique of IVF, in which eggs are fertilised by sperm in a laboratory, creating an embryo that is transferred into a woman’s womb to achieve pregnancy.
Their breakthrough came when the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was born in July 1978 – marking the beginning of a new era of medicine.
Researchers estimate there have now been over 13 million babies born from IVF worldwide.
A two-part event on Friday 26 September at the University of Cambridge will celebrate Edwards’ life, work and legacy, marking what would have been his 100th birthday on Saturday 27 September.
An afternoon of talks and discussion, focusing on science and clinical practice, will take part in the Physiology Lecture Theatre – the building where Edwards succeeding in fertilising a human egg in a test tube. It will involve clinicians and scientists who were trained or inspired by Edwards.
This will be followed by an evening panel discussion open to the public at Churchill College, Cambridge, where Edwards was a Fellow from 1979 and a Member from 1974.
Among the evening panellists will be Louise Brown – the first IVF baby, Dr Jenny Joy – the second of Edwards’ five daughters, Emma Barnett – British Broadcaster and Journalist with a young IVF child, and Dr Mike Macnamee – former CEO of the world’s first IVF clinic, Bourn Hall Clinic, which was established in 1980 by Edwards together with Steptoe and Purdy.
“Scientists studying human reproduction at the University of Cambridge today are building on Sir Bob Edwards’ incredible legacy. Many of their careers overlapped with his, and now they’re developing his science further, and also building on his pioneering contributions to the ethics of assisted reproduction,” said Professor Kathy Niakan, Director of the University of Cambridge’s Loke Centre for Trophoblast Research, who will chair the scientific sessions at Friday’s event.
She added: “To be part of this field today is a unique opportunity for discovery and innovation, and a great honour to carry forward Sir Bob Edwards’ vision in advancing our understanding of human reproduction.”
Dr Jenny Joy, Edwards’ daughter, said, “Our family is delighted to be involved in this event, working with the Loke Centre in the Physiology Department and Churchill College, which both meant a great deal to our father.”
Edwards joined the University of Cambridge in 1963, and went on to win the Nobel Prize in 2010 for his work, by which time around four million people had been born following IVF treatment. Edwards died in 2013, aged 87.
Infertility affects over 10% of all couples worldwide, and IVF is now one of the most commonly used and successful fertility treatments available.
The Bob Edwards centenary conference has been organised by the family of Sir Robert Edwards, the Loke Centre for Trophoblast Research, and Churchill Archives Centre (Churchill College) – which houses Edwards’ papers.
Two Cambridge researchers have been named Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering in recognition of their exceptional contributions to their fields.
Professor Cecilia Mascolo, Professor of Mobile Systems in the Department of Computer Science and Technology and Professor Swami Swaminathan, Professor of Mechanical Engineering in the Department of Engineering, are among 74 leading figures in the field of engineering and technology elected to a Fellowship.
This year’s group consists of 60 Fellows, nine International Fellows and five Honorary Fellows.
They are drawn from every specialism from within the engineering and technology professions and cover sectors ranging from energy and defence to new materials. They have made exceptional contributions to their field: pioneering new innovations within academia and business, providing expert advice to government, and fostering a wider comprehension of engineering and technology.
Professor Cecilia Mascolo, who is also a Fellow of Jesus College, is a pioneer in devising frameworks to collect sensing data from devices such as phones and wearables with the purpose of developing models to understand behaviour and health. During the pandemic, she and her colleagues developed the COVID-19 Sounds App, which collects and analyses short recordings of users coughing and breathing to detect if they are suffering from COVID-19.
Since then, she has been working on ways to turn the devices we wear – such as earbuds – into mobile monitors that can collect data about our state of health, and developing cutting edge machine learning tools to evaluate that data on the device itself.
Professor Swami Swaminathan, who is also a Fellow of Robinson College, is an expert in the physics and chemistry of turbulent reacting flows, their modelling and simulations. His significant finding in turbulence-scalar-chemistry interaction led to a robust and accurate modelling framework enabling quantitative estimates of temperature distribution, emissions, combustion noise and instabilities in combustors using single simulation. His work helps engineers find robust designs of ‘green combustion systems’ for power generation using low- and zero-carbon fuel and helps devise simple models for complex fundamental phenomena.
This year’s new Fellows continue to reflect the Academy’s ongoing Fellowship Fit for the Future initiative announced in July 2020, to drive more nominations of outstanding engineers from underrepresented groups. This commits the Academy to strive for increased representation from women, disabled and LGBTQ+ engineers, those from minority ethnic backgrounds, non-traditional education pathways and emerging industries, and those who have achieved excellence at an earlier career stage than normal.
“As we approach our 50th anniversary next year it’s a good time to reflect on how much we have achieved,” said Sir John Lazar CBE FREng, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering. “The Academy is built on the foundation of our Fellowship, and that remains as true today as half a century ago.
“Today’s cohort join a community of around 1,700 of some of the most talented engineers and innovators in the UK and around the globe. Their knowledge and experience make them uniquely well placed to tackle the biggest challenges facing the world, and our determination to advance and promote excellence in engineering remains undimmed.”
The new Fellows will be formally admitted to the Academy at a ceremony in London on 18 November.
As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in everyday tools and decisions, ensuring the safety and reliability of large language models (LLMs) is more critical than ever. Cambridge spinout Trismik has raised £2.2 million to help it make AI testing faster, smarter and more trustworthy.
AI is no longer just generating answers, it’s shaping decisions, products and lives. If we want trustworthy AI, we need to treat evaluation as seriously as we take training.Nigel Collier, Professor of Natural Language Processing and co-founder of Trismik
LLMs are powering more and more products, but testing their safety, reliability and performance is a significant challenge. Current testing methods are slow, manual and inconsistent, making it difficult for teams to iterate quickly or trust their results.
Trismik aims to solve this by using adaptive testing and automatic scoring to evaluate models against a number of dimensions including factual accuracy, bias and toxicity. Inspired by psychometrics and machine learning, the system dynamically selects the most informative test cases, dramatically reducing the number of datapoints required while achieving high reliability and enabling faster development cycles.
“AI is no longer just generating answers, it’s shaping decisions, products and lives. If we want trustworthy AI, we need to treat evaluation as seriously as we take training. Trismik aims to lead that charge by giving AI engineers the tools to test with precision, act with confidence and build with integrity,” said Nigel Collier, Professor of Natural Language Processing at the University of Cambridge and co-founder and Chief Scientist at Trismik.
Collier, who started his career in the 1990s with a PhD in machine translation using neural networks, has increasingly focused on how we can ensure AI acts as a trusted partner to humanity rather than a risk to it. Collier’s curiosity for whether AI could be assessed in the same efficient and fair way as humans, created the genesis for Trismik’s approach to adaptive evaluation.
In 2023 Collier met co-founder Rebekka Mikkola, a repeat founder and enterprise sales executive with a passion both for building in AI and opening doors for women in tech. The pair were backed early by Cambridge Enterprise and in 2025 were joined by former Amazon scientist Marco Basaldella as CTO, completing a founding team that blends science, engineering and commercial expertise.
Dr Christine Martin, Head of Ventures at Cambridge Enterprise, said: “Trismik exemplifies Cambridge’s continued contribution to global AI development with the team combining world-class academic credentials and practical industry experience that has given them the unique authority to define how AI capabilities should be measured. By solving a pivotal challenge in AI adoption, Trismik is positioned to drive trust at scale – we’re excited to support their journey to market.”
The £2.2m in pre-seed financing was led by Twinpath Ventures, with participation from Cambridge Enterprise Ventures, Parkwalk Advisors, Fund F, Vento Ventures and angel investors from Ventures Together.
People and Artificial Intelligence Credit: Weiquan Lin
Cambridge scientists are using artificial intelligence technology to boost research in a range of fields – from better understanding human intelligence, to describing turbulent flows, to freeing computer systems from the cloud – after securing new Fellowships launched to drive breakthrough discoveries.
The Encode: AI for Science Fellowships embed top AI talent in the UK’s leading labs to tackle scientific challenges and accelerate the path to real-world solutions. Three Fellowships in the first cohort are being hosted at Cambridge.
Encode Fellow Jonathan Carter is using technology originally developed for astrophysics research to decipher how humans understand physics – for example, how the human brain performs intuitive physics calculations, like predicting where a thrown ball will land. Working with Hiranya Peiris, who holds the Cambridge Professorship of Astrophysics (1909), their approach uses interpretable variational encoders, a specialised neural network that can find compact, meaningful representations in complex data. This cross-disciplinary research could advance both our understanding of human intelligence and our ability to build AI systems that learn and generalise like humans do.
Shruti Mishra, another Encode Fellow, is developing an AI system that can discover clear, understandable equations describing how turbulent flows behave across different scales. This is a long-standing challenge in physics that affects everything from weather prediction to aerospace design. Guided by Miles Cranmer, Assistant Professor of Data Intensive Science at Cambridge, Shruti is combining machine learning with symbolic mathematics to automatically produce equations that scientists can interpret and trust, rather than ‘black-box predictions’, where the decision-making process is difficult to understand. Their work has the potential to enable more accurate climate predictions and improve industrial designs.
And Encode Fellow Martyna Stachaczyk is working with Rika Antonova, Associate Professor at Cambridge, to design a biologically inspired, on-device control architecture for real-time, local intelligence. This research could free intelligent systems from the cloud – which can be insecure and inaccessible where connectivity is limited – enabling robust, adaptive autonomy for prosthetics, robots, and environmental platforms even in resource-constrained or disconnected settings.
The Encode AI for Science Fellowship programme is run by Pillar VC, with funding from the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) and the UK Government’s Sovereign AI Unit.
An artificial heart valve made from a new type of plastic could be a step closer to use in humans, following a successful long-term safety test in animals.
A research team, led by the Universities of Bristol and Cambridge, demonstrated that the polymer material used to make the artificial heart valve is safe following a six-month test in sheep.
Currently, the 1.5 million patients who need heart valve replacements each year face trade-offs. Mechanical heart valves are durable but require lifelong blood thinners due to a high risk of blood clots, whereas biological valves, made from animal tissue, typically last between eight to 10 years before needing replacement.
The artificial heart valve developed by the researchers is made from SEBS (styrene-block-ethylene/butyleneblock-styrene) – a type of plastic that has excellent durability but does not require blood thinners – and potentially offers the best of both worlds. However, further testing is required before it can be tested in humans.
In their study, published in the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, the researchers tested a prototype SEBS heart valve in a preclinical sheep model that mimicked how these valves might perform in humans.
The animals were monitored over six months to examine potential long-term safety issues associated with the plastic material. At the end of the study, the researchers found no evidence of harmful calcification (mineral buildup) or material deterioration, blood clotting or signs of cell toxicity. Animal health, wellbeing, blood tests and weight were all stable and normal, and the prototype valve functioned well throughout the testing period, with no need for blood thinners.
“More than 35 million patients’ heart valves are permanently damaged by rheumatic fever, and with an ageing population, this figure is predicted to increase four to five times by 2050,” said Professor Raimondo Ascione from the University of Bristol, the study’s clinical lead. “Our findings could mark the beginning of a new era for artificial heart valves: one that may offer safer, more durable and more patient-friendly options for patients of all ages, with fewer compromises.”
“We are pleased that the new plastic material has been shown to be safe after six months of testing in vivo,” said Professor Geoff Moggridge from Cambridge’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, biomaterial lead on the project. “Confirming the safety of the material has been an essential and reassuring step for us, and a green light to progress the new heart valve replacement toward bedside testing.”
The results suggest that artificial heart valves made from SEBS are both durable and do not require the lifelong use of blood thinners.
While the research is still early-stage, the findings help clear a path to future human testing. The next step will be to develop a clinical-grade version of the SEBS polymer heart valve and test it in a larger preclinical trial before seeking approval for a pilot human clinical trial.
The study was funded by a British Heart Foundation (BHF) grant and supported by a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Invention for Innovation (i4i) programme Product Development Awards (PDA) award. Geoff Moggridge is a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.
A new total-body PET scanner to be hosted in Cambridge – one of only a handful in the country – will transform our ability to diagnose and treat a range of conditions in patients and to carry out cutting-edge research and drug development.
This is an exciting new technology that will transform our ability to answer important questions about how diseases arise and to search for and develop new treatmentsFranklin Aigbirhio
The scanner, funded through a £5.5m investment from the UKRI Medical Research Council (MRC), will form part of the National PET Imaging Platform (NPIP), the UK’s first-of-its-kind national total-body PET imaging platform for drug discovery and clinical research.
Positron emission tomography (PET) is a powerful technology for imaging living tissues and organs down to the molecular level in humans. It can be used to investigate how diseases arise and progress and to detect and diagnose diseases at an early stage.
Total-body PET scanners are more sensitive than existing technology and so can provide new insights into anatomy that have never been seen before, improving detection, diagnosis and treatment of complex, multi-organ diseases.
Current PET technology is less sensitive and requires the patient to be repositioned multiple times to achieve a full-body field of view. Total-body PET scans can achieve this in one session and are quicker, exposing patients to considerably lower doses of radiation. This means more patients, including children, can participate in clinical research and trials to improve our understanding of diseases.
ANGLIA network of universities and NHS trusts
Supplied by Siemens Healthineers, the scanner will also be the focus of the ANGLIA network, comprising three universities, each paired with one or more local NHS trusts: the University of Cambridge and Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; UCL and University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; and the University of Sheffield with Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
The network, supported by UKRI, is partnered with biotech company Altos Labs and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, both with R&D headquarters in Cambridge, and Alliance Medical, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging.
Franklin Aigbirhio, Professor of Molecular Imaging Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, will lead the ANGLIA network. He said: “This is an exciting new technology that will transform our ability to answer important questions about how diseases arise and to search for and develop new treatments that will ultimately benefit not just our patients, but those across the UK and beyond.
“But this is more than just a research tool. It will also help us diagnose and treat diseases at an even earlier stage, particularly in children, for whom repeated investigations using standard PET scanners were not an option.”
The scanner will be located in Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, supported by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, ensuring that the discoveries and breakthroughs it enables can be turned rapidly into benefits to patients. It will expand NHS access to PET services, particularly in underserved areas across the East of England, and support more inclusive trial participation.
Patrick Maxwell, Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine at the University of Cambridge, said: “The ANGLIA network, centred on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and with collaborations across the wider University and its partners, will drive innovations in many areas of this key imaging technology, such as new radiopharmaceuticals and application of AI to data analysis, that will bring benefits to patients far beyond its immediate reach. Its expertise will help build the next generation of PET scientists, as well as enabling partners in industry to use PET to speed up the development of new drugs.”
Roland Sinker, Chief Executive of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Addenbrooke’s Hospital, said: “I am pleased that our patients will be some of the first to benefit from this groundbreaking technology. Harnessing the latest technologies and enabling more people to benefit from the latest research is a vital part of our work at CUH and is crucial to the future of the NHS.
“By locating this scanner at Addenbrooke’s we are ensuring that it can be uniquely used to deliver wide ranging scientific advances across academia and industry, as well as improving the lives of patients.”
It is anticipated that the scanner will be installed by autumn 2026.
The co-location of the total-body PET scanner with existing facilities and integration with systems at the University of Cambridge and Addenbrooke’s Hospital will also enhance training and research capacity, particularly for early-career researchers and underrepresented groups.
The ANGLIA network will provide opportunities to support and train more by people from Black and other minority ethnic backgrounds to participate in PET chemistry and imaging. The University of Cambridge will support a dedicated fellowship scheme, capacity and capability training in key areas, and strengthen the network partnership with joint projects and exchange visits.
Professor Aigbirhio, who is also co-chair of the UKRI MRC’s Black in Biomedical Research Advisory Group, added: “Traditionally, scientists from Black and other minority ethnic backgrounds are under-represented in the field of medical imaging. We aim to use our network to change this, providing fellowship opportunities and training targeted at members of these communities.”
The National PET Imaging Platform
Funded by UKRI’s Infrastructure Fund, and delivered by a partnership between Medicines Discovery Catapult, MRC and Innovate UK, NPIP provides a critical clinical infrastructure of scanners, creating a nationwide network for data sharing, discovery and innovation. It allows clinicians, industry and researchers to collaborate on an international scale to accelerate patient diagnosis, treatment and clinical trials. The MRC funding for the Cambridge scanner will support the existing UKRI Infrastructure Fund investment for NPIP and enables the University to establish a total-body PET facility.
Dr Ceri Williams, Executive Director of Challenge-Led Themes at MRC said: “MRC is delighted to augment the funding for NPIP to provide an additional scanner for Cambridge in line with the original recommendations of the funding panel. This additional machine will broaden the geographic reach of the platform, providing better access for patients from East Anglia and the Midlands, and enable research to drive innovation in imaging, detection, and diagnosis, alongside supporting partnership with industry to drive improvements and efficiency for the NHS.”
Dr Juliana Maynard, Director of Operations and Engagement for the National PET Imaging Platform, said: “We are delighted to welcome the University of Cambridge as the latest partner of NPIP, expanding our game-changing national imaging infrastructure to benefit even more researchers, clinicians, industry partners and, importantly, patients.
“Once operational, the scanner will contribute to NPIP’s connected network of data, which will improve diagnosis and aid researchers’ understanding of diseases, unlocking more opportunities for drug discovery and development. By fostering collaboration on this scale, NPIP helps accelerate disease diagnosis, treatment, and clinical trials, ultimately leading to improved outcomes for patients.”
The University of Cambridge hosted a visit from local MP, and Farming Minister Daniel Zeichner MP, at the Sainsbury Laboratory.
The visit brought together fundamental plant science research with crop and Agri-Tech researchers from across the University for a series of research demonstrations and a roundtable discussion.
Mr Zeichner toured the award-winning facility, meeting researchers in the open-plan office and lab spaces, which foster collaboration and advances in multi-disciplinary research.
The Minister saw exciting examples of foundational research, which have the potential to transform agriculture and ensure long term sustainability.
The first demonstration was led by Dr Sebastian Schornack and PhD student Nicolas Hernandez, who are investigating the plant developmental processes. The Minister saw through the microscope how they are using beetroot pigments to enable us to see how fungi is colonising living plant roots. This research allows us to track and measure in real time how chemicals, soil tillage and environmental conditions impact this beneficial plant-microbe relationship.
Mr Zeichner then visited the Lab’s microscopy room, and met with Dr Madelaine Bartlett and her colleague Terice Kelly. Dr Madelaine Bartlett’s team researches the development of maize flowers (among other grass and cereal species) with a particular focus on the genetics behind these specialised flowers and future crop improvement. The team demonstrated how they image a maize flower on the Lab’s desktop scanning electron microscope.
The Sainsbury Laboratory boasts its own Bee Room, where Dr Edwige Moyroud demonstrated how bumble bees are helping to reveal the characteristics of petal patterns that are most important for attracting pollinators. Dr Moyroud and her team are identifying the genes that plants use to produce patterns that attract pollinators by combining various research techniques, including experiments, modelling, microscopy and bee behaviour.
Finally, overlooking Cambridge’ Botanic Gardens, academics from the Department of Plant Sciences and the Crop Science Centre presented on research into regenerative agriculture and using AI to measure and prevent crop disease.
Professor Lynn Dicks presented on the latest findings of the H3 research on regenerative agriculture. Professor Dicks and colleagues, during this ongoing five-year project, have worked collaboratively with farming clusters in the UK to study the impacts of a transition on regenerative agriculture, which has so far has been shown to improve soil health and reduce the use of chemicals.
Professor Eves-van Den Akker and his team, based at the University’s Crop Science Centre, have combined low-cost 3D printing of custom imaging machines with state-of-the-art deep-learning algorithms to make millions of measurements, of tens of thousands of parasites across hundreds of genotypes. They are now working with companies to translate this fundamental research, with the aim of accelerating their breeding programs for crop resistance to pests and disease.
The visit concluded with a discussion of the UK’s leading strengths in Agri-Tech and crop science, and how the UK and Cambridge are an attractive place for researchers from around the world to work, and make exciting advances, with global impact.
Immune cells released from bone marrow in the skull in response to chronic stress and adversity could play a key role in symptoms of depression and anxiety, say researchers.
There’s a significant proportion of people for whom antidepressants don’t work. If we can figure out what’s happening with the immune system, we may be able to alleviate or reduce depressive symptomsStacey Kigar
The discovery – found in a study in mice – sheds light on the role that inflammation can play in mood disorders and could help in the search for new treatments, in particular for those individuals for whom current treatments are ineffective.
Around 1 billion people will be diagnosed with a mood disorder such as depression or anxiety at some point in their life. While there may be many underlying causes, chronic inflammation – when the body’s immune system stays active for a long time, even when there is no infection or injury to fight – has been linked to depression. This suggests that the immune system may play an important role in the development of mood disorders.
Previous studies have highlighted how high levels of an immune cell known as a neutrophil, a type of white blood cell, are linked to the severity of depression. But how neutrophils contribute to symptoms of depression is currently unclear.
In research published today in Nature Communications, a team led by scientists at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the National Institute of Mental Health, USA, tested a hypothesis that chronic stress can lead to the release of neutrophils from bone marrow in the skull. These cells then collect in the meninges – membranes that cover and protect your brain and spinal cord – and contribute to symptoms of depression.
As it is not possible to test this hypothesis in humans, the team used mice exposed to chronic social stress. In this experiment, an ‘intruder’ mouse is introduced into the home cage of an aggressive resident mouse. The two have brief daily physical interactions and can otherwise see, smell, and hear each other.
The researchers found that prolonged exposure to this stressful environment led to a noticeable increase in levels of neutrophils in the meninges, and that this was linked to signs of depressive behaviour in the mice. Even after the stress ended, the neutrophils lasted longer in the meninges than they did in the blood. Analysis confirmed the researchers’ hypothesis that the meningeal neutrophils – which appeared subtly different from those found in the blood – originated in the skull.
Further analysis suggested that long-term stress triggered a type of immune system ‘alarm warning’ known as type I interferon signalling in the neutrophils. Blocking this pathway – in effect, switching off the alarm – reduced the number of neutrophils in the meninges and improved behaviour in the depressed mice. This pathway has previously been linked to depression – type 1 interferons are used to treat patients with hepatitis C, for example, but a known side effect of the medication is that it can cause severe depression during treatment.
Dr Stacey Kigar from the Department of Medicine at the University of Cambridge said: “Our work helps explain how chronic stress can lead to lasting changes in the brain’s immune environment, potentially contributing to depression. It also opens the door to possible new treatments that target the immune system rather than just brain chemistry.
“There’s a significant proportion of people for whom antidepressants don’t work, possibly as many as one in three patients. If we can figure out what’s happening with the immune system, we may be able to alleviate or reduce depressive symptoms.”
The reason why there are high levels of neutrophils in the meninges is unclear. One explanation could be that they are recruited by microglia, a type of immune cell unique to the brain. Another possible explanation is that chronic stress may cause microhaemorrhages, tiny leaks in brain blood vessels, and that neutrophils – the body’s ‘first responders’ – arrive to fix the damage and prevent any further damage. These neutrophils then become more rigid, possibly getting stuck in brain capillaries and causing further inflammation in the brain.
Dr Mary-Ellen Lynall from the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge said: “We’ve long known that something is different about how neutrophils behave after stressful events, or during depression, but we didn’t know what these neutrophils were doing, where they were going, or how they might be affecting the brain and mind. Our findings show that these ‘first responder’ immune cells leave the skull bone marrow and travel to the brain, where they can influence mood and behaviour.
“Most people will have experienced how our immune systems can drive short-lived depression-like symptoms. When we are sick, for example with a cold or flu, we often lack energy and appetite, sleep more and withdraw from social contact. If the immune system is always in a heightened, pro-inflammatory state, it shouldn’t be too surprising if we experience longer-term problems with our mood.”
The findings could provide a useful signature, or ‘biomarker’, to help identify those patients whose mood disorders are related to inflammation. This could help in the search for better treatments. For example, a clinical trial of a potential new drug that targets inflammation of the brain in depression might appear to fail if trialled on a general cohort of people with depression, whereas using the biomarker to identify individuals whose depression is linked to inflammation could increase the likelihood of the trial succeeding.
The findings may also help explain why depression is a symptom common in other neurological disorders such as stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, as it may be the case that neutrophils are being released in response to the damage to the brain seen in these conditions. But it may also explain why depression is itself a risk factor for dementia in later life, if neutrophils can themselves trigger damage to brain cells.
The research was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health and Care Research Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre.
