Tissuestik wins £10,000 innovation prize

Inventors Mike Millar and Sheila MacPherson say device reduces contamination risk

Tissuestik, a new concept for protecting human tissue samples from cross-contamination in laboratories, has won £10,000 in the Edinburgh BioQuarter Innovation Competition 2012.

Mike Millar and Sheila MacPherson of the University of Edinburgh’s Queen’s Medical Research Institute, came up with the idea a couple of years ago and the competition gave them the opportunity to get the idea developed.

“Human tissue samples vary widely in their size and shape, and current methods of handling tissue put samples at risk of cross-contamination from other samples. This can result in patients being at risk of misdiagnosis and in some cases unnecessary surgery,” said Millar.

“Tissuestik makes sample handling easier and dramatically reduces contamination risk. It can also be easily used in any pathology laboratory setting, and will have a relatively low development cost.”

Millar and MacPherson now plan to develop a couple of prototype devices so that they can be evaluated on other pathology labs.

Millar added: “Unfortunately due to patent/IP issues we are not able to disclose much information at the moment. But basically it is non-contact in that we can handle samples without them touching the device (a bit like putting on and taking off gloves for each sample handled). Because of the novel no contact principle it should stop cross contamination at this stage in the process.“

Dr Mike Capaldi, commercialisation director at Edinburgh BioQuarter, said: “Three times as many people entered this competition this year than last, and we were able to recognise only twenty winners and five finalists. But the quality of the entries we received this year means we’ll be talking further with a wide range of scientists at the University and in the NHS about turning their entries into commercial applications.”

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