Prof Annette Byrne, RCSI, COLOSSUS Coordinator, NPIC Director
In Ireland, a new National Preclinical Imaging Centre (NPIC) which will provide enhanced research data to inform new clinical trials that aim to improve patient outcomes, has been awarded funding of €3.4 million under Science Foundation Ireland’s (SFI) Research Infrastructure Programme. COLOSSUS Coordinator, Prof Annette Byrne of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) will be the Director of NPIC.
NPIC is the first of its kind in Ireland, is being established and co-funded by RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, University College Dublin (UCD), and CÚRAM, the SFI Research Centre for Medical Devices, based at National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG). The facility will support the development of new therapeutics and diagnostics in human disease areas including cancer, neurology, dementia, psychiatry, cardiology, medical devices, diabetes, tissue engineering, nanomedicine and inflammatory disease, and is open to all academic, industry and not-for-profit researchers. It will have locations in Dublin (RCSI, UCD) and Galway (NUIG). NPIC establishes a national pre-clinical magnetic resonance (MR) facility, a national high-field preclinical MR / chemical imaging platform and incorporates a high-resolution micro-computed tomography (CT) and Optical Imaging laboratory.
“The National Preclinical Imaging Centre’s high resolution imaging technologies will allow the research community in Ireland to respond to future international research challenges and will provide important support infrastructure for SFI Research Centres, Irish academic institutes and industry collaborators,” commented Director of NPIC, Professor Annette Byrne, Head of the RCSI Precision Cancer Medicine Group, Department of Physiology and Medical Physics and Centre for Systems Medicine at RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences.
Read the official RCSI press release here.