The £21.6M project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund through the Welsh European Funding Office, Swansea University, NHS Trust, WAG Health Department and Industry.

Technology, and particularly Nanotechnology, has an increasingly important and strategic role to play in furthering our ability to detect and treat disease, and this has been central to the work of the University’s Multidisciplinary Nanotechnology Centre (MNC), established within the School of Engineering in 2001.

Coupled with developments in biomarker discovery in Biomedical research at the School of Medicine’s Institute of Life Science (ILS), the challenges that can be overcome through Nanotechnology have the potential to lead to novel devices, processes and sensors essential for the earliest detection of disease onset, developed for point of care, near–patient and in vivo application.

Nano-devices and Nano-biosensors will permit the detection and measurement of biomarkers present in fluid or tissue samples at a level of sensitivity far beyond current detection methods; in the parts per billion range.