Dr Ian Holland

I've developed a new method to create life-like layered tissue in the lab, which could reduce the need for experiments involving animals. The EPSRC IAA and Wellcome Trust iTPA funding is allowing me to bridge the gap from a manual process to one that includes automation, preparing for future commercialisation of the technology.

Dr Holland received his MEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bath before working as a project engineer in the pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing industries. He later transitioned into research with an Engineering Doctorate and Postdoctorate from the University of Strathclyde. This led to his role in the CyGenTiG team at the University of Edinburgh to collaborate internationally at the interface between engineering and biology. 

His team developed a technique known as RIFLE – Rotational Internal Flow Layer Engineering – to enable the construction of ultra-thin layers of human cells in tube-like structures as delicate as one cell thick. Such precision is crucial for developing representative human models of layered tubular tissue in the lab such as blood vessels and intestines, offering an important alternative to animal models for use in research. The technology was developed by scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Strathclyde and was supported by EU Horizon 2020, EPSRC, BBSRC and WT iTPA funding. 

The University’s commercialisation service, Edinburgh Innovations, supported the team to obtain a patent and is working to develop further applications of this novel technique.

Getting to this point was not a straight line, Dr Holland’s career has navigated the space at the intersection between academia and industry and he has had to draw on experience from both domains to develop RIFLE. An example can be found in the recent EPSRC IAA and Wellcome Trust iTPA projects where a combination of commercial manufacturing and tissue engineering skills have been applied to scale up the RIFLE process.

The dual-focused career has also given him many advantages. It has paved the way for this new technology, which in turn qualified Ian to embark on an Innovation Fellowship. With the support of the Innovation Fellowship, he is looking forward to tackling the next tissue development and commercialisation challenges. Read an interview with Dr Holland about his Fellowship.

There are opportunities via the Wellcome Institutional Translation Partnership Award (iTPA)  which provides upskilling and funding support to ECRs to seed translational activity. If you are an ECR, we invite you to join Edinburgh Innovation’s iTPA Translational Hub, which aims to build a skilled translational research community for scientists who want their research to make a difference through practical application in the real world.