King's College London

The five-year cross-disciplinary programme, led by Professor Maddy Parsons from the School of Basic & Medical Biosciences, will develop pioneering approaches to enable the creation of full molecular ‘maps’ of disease tissue, spanning multiple scales from whole organ down to individual molecules.

The programme will combine MRI-based clinical imaging of patients with emerging spatial methods that capture the underlying cellular and molecular activity within tissues in intricate detail. By combining data from these diverse imaging approaches using advanced computational and AI-driven tools, the team aim to reveal how cells interact with their environment and how these interactions drive disease.

The project will involve 10 diverse research groups spanning five different institutions and two NHS Trusts, who will work as an integrated team to provide new technology and data solutions for the broader biomedical community.

This builds on successful work from the programme’s initial phase, which developed proof-of-concept approaches to study tissue mechanics and spatial organisation in breast cancer. The new funding will expand these capabilities, improving resolution, speed and analytical power, enabling researchers to investigate hard-to-treat diseases in lung and liver.

The project also involves Dr Mads Bergholt, Dr Niloufar Safinia, Dr Alex Morrell, Professor Anita Grigoriadis and Professor Ralph Sinkus from King’s.

Alongside Professor Parsons’ award, Professor Gavin Bewick from the School of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine & Sciences is also part of an international collaboration that has secured a share of a Wellcome Bioimaging Technology Development Award worth £4.6m

The project is developing an approach that combines 3D super-resolution ultrasound imaging with genetically encoded acoustic reporters, enabling scientists to engineer cells so they can be visualised using ultrasound. This allows researchers to track individual cells deep within living systems in real time, offering insights into how cells function, communicate and adapt without invasive procedures or expensive imaging platforms.

Professor Bewick, whose lab will receive £800,000, will lead the biological validation of the technology. The work will draw on his expertise in organoid technology, islet biology, gut endocrine cells and transgenic model development to test the platform in models of metabolic disease.

The wider collaboration brings together a multidisciplinary team of engineers, physicists, physiologists and bioengineers led by Professor Mengxing Tang at Imperial College London, with co-applicants from Imperial and TU Delft.