The ACROPATH project is celebrating its first year, marking major progress in this UK–Japan collaboration. Highlights from 2025 include the project launch meeting in March, an AMED visit to Leeds in May, the full research team coming together in October, and the first exchange visits between partners in the UK and Japan. Further exchanges and the annual project meeting at JAMSTEC are planned for early 2026 as the team continues to advance this ambitious synthetic biology programme.
Read more at this LinkedIn post.
Shivendra started the next exchange visit, departing to spend time in the lab of Yutetsu Kuruma until February. Shivendra will learn new systems essential to the development of the ACROPATH project and continue to work with Yusei on integration and optimisation of their systems and methods.
The Leeds team were delighted to welcome Dr Yusei Sato to Leeds for the first research exchange visit. Yusei worked side by side with Shivendra on the vesicle synthesis technology. The benefits of the collaborative approach to our project became instantly apparent as, using their combined experience, we have quickly been able to make significant advances in the project! The next exchange sees Shivendra joining Yusei at JAMSTEC in Japan.
Calum MacRae joined the ACROPATH team in Leeds, starting his PhD under the supervision of Paul, Mike and Kerrie. As well as contributing to the development of the ACROPATH technology, Calum will have a focus on considering requirements that would aid translation into a clinical setting.
We were delighted to welcome a delegation from one of our funders AMED to Leeds. AMED fund the Japan based part of the project and during the visit we were able to explain in more detail the precise scientific plan. AMED gave the whole team details of their funding priorities and how they are fostering scientific collaboration through their ASPIRE programme.
Members of the ACROPATH team from UK and Japan attended the kick-off event in London for all the recently-funded UK-Japan Engineering Biology collaborations. This event featured presentations of the different projects and an opportunity to network across the different teams.
The UK and Japan teams were excited to meet up in Leeds in March 2025 to formally start our joint research collaboration. The visit let us plan the first steps of our project in detail as well as learning more about the precise technologies that all of the contributors can bring to bear on this challenging project. We were also able to make the personal links that make collaboration so much more successful. The Japanese visitors also took the opportunity to visit some of the area around Leeds including a visit to the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
