GE Healthcare to support SBC’s neurodegenerative disease challenge

GE Healthcare has announced that it will be allying with the Stevenage Bioscience Catalyst (SBC) to support its scheme to encourage open innovation in neurodegenerative disease research.

Aimed at stimulating interaction between academics, industry and charities, the open innovation challenge was launched in May 2014 by SBC, Manchester Integrating Medicine and Innovative Technology and six academic health science centre technology transfer organisations.

Proposals will be considered from academic teams in two fields – biomarkers for diagnosis and patient stratification, and inflammation/neurodegeneration. These will be reviewed by a panel of experts that includes sponsors such as GE Healthcare.

The announcement supports the company's MIND (Make an Impact on Neurological Disorders) initiative, which aims to improve the prediction, detection and diagnosis of these conditions.

Ger Brophy, chief technology officer of GE Healthcare Life Sciences, said: "This SBC initiative supports our goal of finding new, better ways for physicians to detect and diagnose these most difficult of diseases."

This month, the company also signed one of the largest cyclotron and radiochemistry system agreements in the world with Stockholm County Council and Karolinska University Hospital. It will be building a complete tracer production facility centre for use by the hospital.