Research in magic circles

The hope is that such research circles will create much closer links between GE’s scientists and academic groups in some of the world’s leading universities. The idea is to accelerate the flow of information between researchers and, in the process, to bring new techniques to market much more quickly.

GE Healthcare brings these circles together every year for those all-important face-to-face meetings that create a genuine community. There is also the inevitable Web interface where researchers can hold virtual meetings.

The research circles make it easier for scientists to communicate between one another, as well as with the wider group. And the contracts signed by members of the circle mean that they can converse and exchange ideas without compromising any intellectual property rights.

Gaining confidence in research circles

GE now sees this as best practice in the management of its collaborations with academic groups. The company gained the confidence to create research circles after a two-year experiment with one of its major projects.

In 2003, a team at Amersham Health Research, Malmö, Sweden, published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on dynamic nuclear polarisation (DNP).

The researchers came up with a method for, “obtaining strongly polarised nuclear spins in solution”. In essence, DNP is a way of transferring “spin” from electrons to the nuclei of atoms. The process labels molecules so that they are much more visible in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner.

Before DNP, “You might have to sit in a magnet for an hour to get one image,” says Murray. Now medics can inject a DNP-tagged contrast agent into a patient and watch real-time “live biochemistry” in the scanner. The magnetic signal from these molecules is as much as 10,000 times stronger than earlier generations of contrast agent.

Adding DNP to MRI gives rise to metabolic magnetic resonance, a technique for measuring the biochemical "fingerprint" of tissue. It can look for biochemical changes that accompany the development of tumours, for example, and can diagnose cancer before there are any physical symptoms.

The same approach can be used to image the activity of new drugs to see if they have an effect on a tumour. Metabolic magnetic resonance can look at many other bodily functions, normal or abnormal. It is, says Murray, a way to look at how the body processes chemicals in real time.

The DNP research circle

Professor Kevin Brindle runs one of the groups in the DNP research circle, in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. DNP, says Brindle, is a way to look at tissue metabolism very quickly. His group has looked at tumours in mice and in one paper suggests, “This technique could be used clinically to image pathological processes that are associated with alterations in tissue pH, such as cancer, ischaemia and inflammation”.

It was the sheer power of the new DNP technique that prompted GE Healthcare to experiment with new ways of running research. The technology is so broad, says Murray, that, “You would be hard pressed to find any place that can do everything”.

For metabolic magnetic resonance to work and to become a commercial product, GE Healthcare had to assemble hardware, software and “wetware”. The hardware is the MRI equipment that traces the contrast agents. The software interprets the images that the MRI delivers. The wetware is the contrast agent, which has to be tailored to fit the biochemical process that is being monitored. “All of these things have to come together at the same time,” says Murray. “That is the challenge of this project.”

Few groups, even within GE Healthcare, can bring together all of these technologies. Why not, then, bring in academic experts to help? This is how GE Healthcare’s first research circle came about. It started with five research groups and has, over the past three years, grown to become a network of 14 different laboratories around the world.

The research circle contract

In that time, GE has refined the contracts that groups sign when they join hands in the circle. “The research circle is a contract,” says Murray. This deals with such issues as publishing and patenting.

The idea is not to prevent publication, says Murray, quite the opposite. Publishing is essential, but it has to happen in a way that does not remove the all important ability to patent any findings, and thus commercialise the work.

By giving academic groups access to its technology, equipment and other resources, GE Healthcare can accelerate the pace of development, and at the same time stay on top of the patenting. The key attribute of the circle is that it allows the researchers from different groups to talk among themselves without compromising intellectual property rights, says Murray.

Brindle is a fan of the research circle. “We had a flying start,” he explains. GE Healthcare lent his group the polariser needed to make contrast agents and provided the all-important know-how in using the instrumentation.

Brindle likes being able to talk to other groups in the circle, and especially values the ability to pass on techniques. Publishing papers about new techniques is all very well, he says, but “showing someone how to do it is much more valuable”.

For example, his group is not expert in fast imaging methods, so he is happy to learn about this from a group in the US. Brindle’s team has also worked with another at Oxford University that is applying metabolic magnetic resonance to cardiology.

One measure of the pace of progress is the rate at which publications appear. The DNP circle has already come up with more than a hundred papers.

After three year’s experience with the DNP, Murray is keen to move his portfolio of other projects into research circles. While the circles don't save money in comparison with other ways of doing research, it is, “A lower cost way of getting results,” says Murray.

It is becoming easier and easier to set up the circles, though at first, some universities were suspicious. Murray quotes one (nameless) institution, where the contracts people weren’t keen. But the dean of research saw the proposals and took to the idea immediately.

Internal doubts within GE Healthcare were, if anything, more pronounced than any concerns in the academic world, says Murray. But he adds, “Our senior managers quickly got the idea”.

The new technique of metabolic magnetic resonance image should see its first clinical trials sometime in 2009. And there could be commercial products within five years or so. That would make it less than a decade after the first publication, a timetable that is breathtakingly rapid for a medical breakthrough.