King's College London

Innovation often begins with a simple question, a personal curiosity, an unmet need, or a practical challenge that refuses to go away. The five case studies in this series explore how researchers across King’s transformed ideas into innovations with the potential to create real-world impact. From new approaches to cancer treatment and pharmaceutical technologies, to educational tools, biomedical data platforms and robotics, each journey reveals a different route from discovery to application.

Featuring Professor Stuart Jones, Professor Maya Thanou, Dr Arthur Galamba, Dr Miquel Serna Pascual and Dr Matthew Howard, these stories show that successful innovation is about much more than having a good idea. Their experiences highlight the importance of identifying genuine problems, engaging with users and stakeholders, building the right networks, learning from setbacks, and developing the skills and mindsets needed to turn research into practical solutions.

While each case study is unique, common themes emerge. The speakers describe how collaboration, mentorship and support from King’s innovation ecosystem helped them navigate unfamiliar territory, whether securing intellectual property, developing commercial partnerships, testing new technologies or building entrepreneurial confidence. They also reflect on the challenges of balancing innovation with academic careers, adapting when plans changed, and staying focused on creating value for the people who might ultimately benefit from their work.

Together, these case studies offer an honest and inspiring look at the innovation process in practice. Whether you are at the beginning of your own innovation journey or looking for fresh perspectives on research impact, they demonstrate that meaningful change often starts with curiosity, grows through collaboration, and succeeds through persistence.

Professor Stuart Jones

Professor Stuart Jones, whose research group develops innovative pharmaceutical formulations and devices, has 14 patents and has three medical devices in clinical development that focus on administration of active ingredients into and through the skin.

For Professor Stuart Jones, innovation for his latest vitamin D patch did not begin in the laboratory, but through a personal interest in nutrition. While reading widely about vitamin D and its biological importance, he became increasingly aware of the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency, even among people living in sunny climates. This curiosity led him to investigate how different populations responded to conventional vitamin D supplementation. His research revealed a significant challenge: some ethnic groups responded poorly to oral vitamin D supplements, suggesting that existing approaches were not working equally well for everyone.

Rather than accept the limitation, Stuart saw an opportunity. Drawing on his expertise as a pharmacist, and medicines developer, he asked a simple but powerful question: why not generate vitamin D in the skin, where the body naturally produces it, rather than relying on oral supplements? That insight sparked a new research programme focused on developing molecules that could create vitamin D in the skin through metabolism.

The journey has taken seven years, progressing from concept and discovery through patent protection and clinical testing. The successful clinical trial results were a defining moment, providing evidence that the innovation could deliver real benefits for patients and bringing the product closer to market.

Throughout this journey, King’s College London has played a critical enabling role. Stuart credits the university’s reputation, extensive networks and collaborative culture with opening doors to industry partners and expert advisers. Support from colleagues across King’s Innovation Catalyst and the wider university has helped him connect with commercial experts, clinicians and innovators whose experience has been invaluable.

Professor Maya Thanou

Professor Maya Thanou is a research leader in image-guided drug activation methods. She collaborates with a number of biotech and medical device companies and is the main or co-inventor of 10 patents including a new approach in cancer treatment through Apeikon Therapeutics, tackling the widespread side effects caused when anti-cancer drugs circulate throughout the body.

Maya's innovation journey has been driven by a lifelong ambition to make cancer treatments safer and more effective. Throughout her career in Europe and the UK, she has focused on solving a key challenge in oncology: ensuring drugs reach tumours while reducing harmful side effects elsewhere in the body.

Her breakthrough came when she combined novel drug chemistry with medical devices capable of activating treatments from outside the body. This led to the development of activatable drugs that can be visualised using clinical imaging and activated non-invasively at the target site. The innovation's potential became clear following in vivo studies that demonstrated a 100-fold increase in drug availability at a specific location compared with existing approaches. Recognising the significance of these findings, Maya moved quickly to secure patents and establish Apeikon Therapeutics to translate the research towards clinical impact.

Strong networks have been central to her success. Internationally, she benefited from mentorship through MIT entrepreneurship programmes and extensive scientific collaborations around imaging and medical device technologies. At King's, support from the King's Innovation Catalyst and King’s Spinout Accelerator provided valuable guidance and expertise, all offered for free. She strongly encourages those interested in commercialising their research to reach out for advice, from King’s Innovation Catalyst, or networks outside the university.

Dr Arthur Galamba

Dr Arthur Galamba is a Senior Lecturer in Science Education at King's College London, where he works in teacher education, digital pedagogy, and science education research. He is the co-founder and pedagogical lead of Collabits, an interactive representational learning platform designed to support student-centred, collaborative, and hybrid learning. His work focuses on formative assessment, blended and hybrid learning, dialogic teaching, and the development of innovative pedagogical approaches that enhance interaction, feedback, and student engagement in higher education and teacher training.

Arthur's innovation journey began during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the rapid shift to online teaching exposed constraints in the digital tools available to educators. Wanting to create more opportunities for interaction, collaboration and feedback, he helped develop Collabits, a learning platform that enables students and teachers to co-create learning spaces both online and in person.

Moving from academic idea to commercial product required Arthur to develop skills far beyond his expertise in education. One of his most important lessons was recognising the value of building a founding team with complementary strengths. Having never planned to start a business, he deliberately sought colleagues with experience in business development, markets and commercial strategy, while he focused on the educational vision and user needs.

The King's Start-up Accelerator played a crucial role in this journey. Through the programme, Arthur gained practical knowledge from experts in marketing, sales, business development and regulation. The accelerator also helped him negotiate dedicated time for innovation activities alongside his academic responsibilities.

Today, Collabits is being used by students and teachers and has attracted both awards and investor support. Arthur's experience highlights the importance of teamwork, understanding the wider innovation ecosystem, and being willing to learn new skills while staying focused on the needs of users.

Dr Miquel Serna Pascual

Dr Miquel Serna Pascual is a postdoctoral researcher currently working in advanced ECG signal processing for cardiac drug safety assessment. With expertise in data science, he is passionate about facilitating the extraction of actionable knowledge from biomedical datasets thus creating impact by improving health research and care provision. Miquel has also been on the Innovate UK ICURe Explore and Exploit programmes, and King's MedTech Accelerator.

Miquel's innovation journey has been shaped by a fascination with innovation itself and a desire to unlock the value hidden within complex biomedical data. From studying biomedical sciences and pharmacology to specialising in bioinformatics and data science, he has consistently sought opportunities to apply emerging technologies to healthcare challenges.

During his PhD at King's College London, Miquel developed a software platform designed to extract new insights from physiological data, including ECG and respiratory signals. While the technical foundations were strong, understanding how the technology could create real-world impact required engagement beyond the laboratory.

Two programmes proved particularly influential. Through the London Institute of Healthcare Engineering's MedTech Accelerator, Miquel gained exposure to innovation pathways and explored how his technology could evolve from a research algorithm into a potential medical device. Conversations with mentors and healthcare innovators helped him focus on practical applications and user needs.

Participation in the ICURe Explore programme further accelerated his thinking. By engaging with stakeholders and potential end users, he began to view the technology not simply as an academic tool, but as a solution with commercial and clinical potential.

A defining moment came during a visit to a pharmaceutical company in Belgium, where researchers responded enthusiastically to his software. Seeing potential users recognise its value provided the confidence to continue pursuing translation and impact. For Miquel, accelerator programmes, mentorship and stakeholder engagement have been instrumental in transforming promising research into an innovation journey with real-world potential.

Dr Matthew Howard

Dr Matthew Howard’s research addresses a key challenge in robotics: handling products that are irregular, delicate, flexible or otherwise difficult for conventional automation to handle. His breakthrough came from realising that tangling could be used as an effective gripping method, revealing strong commercial potential. With support from King’s, he developed prototypes, secured IP, and built business skills through King’s Spinout Accelerator, where he also refined his value proposition and founded The Weird Gripper Company. Now focused on industrial pilots in sectors like agriculture and food packaging, his goal is to enable more adaptable, efficient automation while reducing waste and labour pressures.

Matthew Howard’s innovation journey began unexpectedly through a chance conversation with an industry partner at a robotics conference. Invited to explore challenges in a commercial herb production facility, he identified a major bottleneck: the labour-intensive packaging of fresh herbs. When an initial attempt to automate the process with conventional robotics proved difficult, his team uncovered an unexpected insight. Instead of treating tangling as a problem, they realised it could become the solution, using tangling itself as a gripping mechanism. This breakthrough led to patented technology and the foundation of The Weird Gripper Company.

Along the way, Matthew learned the importance of embracing uncertainty, making difficult decisions, and building strong relationships with industry partners. He attributes openness to learning, adaptability, and persistence as key factors in progress. A major milestone came when the technology successfully packed fresh herbs into a commercial retail package for the first time, demonstrating its real-world potential and marking a significant step towards market adoption.

Watch the panel discussion in full to hear more about these innovation journeys in their own words. If you would like to take the first steps towards innovation, speak to King’s Innovation Catalyst at innovation@kcl.ac.uk.