Giulio Cerullo, a co-founder of Cambridge Raman Imaging, shares his excitement about the potential of CHARM to improve tumour diagnosis.
Tumour diagnosis currently relies on a time-consuming century-old technique called H&E staining; Cerullo aims to replace it with a new revolutionary method.
Combining a special nonlinear optical microscope developed in his laboratory with graphene and laser technology developed in Cambridge, he plans to develop a way to extract more information from patient tissues and reliably identify the presence and type of a tumour. Cerullo is excited to be part of the CHARM project, which he sees as a fantastic opportunity to develop this technology and advance it towards real commercial exploitation.
I am amazed by the progress that has been achieved since the beginning of the CHARM project. Developing such a product was only a dream a few years ago.
He believes that this technology has the potential to impact the quality of life of patients by providing them with a more accurate diagnosis and improving the outcome of the disease.
The support of the European Innovation Council has been instrumental in bringing his dream closer to reality.
Transcript
About Giulio Cerullo
My name is Giulio Cerullo, and I am a professor of physics at Politecnico di Milano. I have over 30 years of experience in research in optics and photonics, focusing mainly on the fundamental aspects of light-matter interaction.
A company with revolutionary technologies
About four years ago, together with my colleague Andrea Ferrari at Cambridge, I co-founded the company Cambridge Raman Imaging with the idea to commercialize a new revolutionary technology that was being developed in my laboratory, combined with other revolutionary technology based on graphene that was developed in Cambridge to really change the way that currently tumours are diagnosed. To change histopathology.
How new technologies could improve histopathology
And the idea is to replace an over one century-old technique which is called the H&I staining in histopathology, which involves colouring the tissue samples from the patients, with a new approach, which is based on a special laser that is able to extract the chemical composition of the tissue.
The value of being part of CHARM
So the CHARM project is a fantastic opportunity to really develop this technology and advance technology at this level towards real commercial exploitation.
And I am really excited to be part of this project because, after so many years of research, having the opportunity to develop a product that may really impact the quality of life of patients by providing them with a more accurate diagnosis and even improving the outcome of the disease, is really an exciting and also strongly motivating opportunity.
Actually, I am already amazed by the progress that was achieved since the beginning of the CHARM project, so I must say that this was more or less a dream that I had a few years ago that we could really develop such a product.
And now I see it as a more concrete possibility, really. Thanks also to the support of the European Innovation Council.