Nerve repair project awarded prestigious UCL Rosetrees Stoneygate Prize

The award will provide £250,000 over three years and aims to stimulate interdisciplinary research for the benefit of human health.  

This cross-faculty research team includes Rebecca Shipley, (UCL Mechanical Engineering, UCL Institute of Healthcare Engineering), Ashleigh Boyd (UCL Division of Surgery & Interventional Science, UCL Institute of Immunity & Transplantation), Victoria Roberton (UCL School of Pharmacy) and Gareth Williams (UCL School of Pharmacy). The team work together within the UCL Centre for Nerve Engineering, a centre to engineer solutions to clinical nerve repair problems led by co-Directors James Phillips and Rebecca Shipley. 

This new project looks at a new way of repairing serious peripheral nerve injuries where a gap in the nerve needs to be bridged. Currently, the best way of doing this is with an autograft – a graft of tissue from one part to another part of a person’s body. Unfortunately, this can result in painful complications for the patient and there is limited tissue available. The team will use a multi-disciplinary approach to develop alternatives to nerve autografts in order to improve outcomes without side effects.