Information on Loughborough

Dr Goodyer to fight Charnwood for Labour

Posted on 02/09/2008

Eric Goodyer using the new in-vivo measuring device under the supervision of Prof Markus Hess at UKE Hamburg

Eric Goodyer, Labours Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Charnwood has been awarded a PhD by DeMontfort University in recognition of his published works in the field medical research and engineering.

Eric has been designing industrial and laboratory devices for 30 years, his early career being with the Scientific Instrument Research Association (Sira). He was made redundant during the John Major recession, and set up his own business as a self-employed engineer. Amongst his early clients were Procter & Gamble, who commissioned a series of gadgets to test the effectiveness of skin creams and shampoos.

The Linear Skin Rheometer (LSR) was developed specifically to determine how well moisturising creams were at making skin supple, by measuring the minute changes in skin elasticity as the creams worked; and it is now used by laboratories in the USA, UK and Europe. The LSR came to the attention of Harvard Medical School in 2000, where they are researching ways to repair damaged human vocal folds (commonly know as vocal cords). which can result in partial or total loss of the ability to speak. What Harvard were seeking was a device capable of measuring the elasticity of damaged and healthy tissue to provide an objective assessment of the change that results from tissue engineering.

This was the start of a long term collaboration between the Erics Engineering team at DeMontfort University, Harvard and other medical research institutions such as UKE Hamburg, The Karolinska Institute in Sweden, UCLA and Wisconsin University Hospital.

One of the most challenging engineering achievements was the design of a new medical device capable of measuring a patients vocal folds during surgery, which was done in partnership with UKE Hamburg. It is hoped that future variants of this device will allow surgeons to objectively measure the effectiveness of their surgical procedure during the operation to repair damage tissue.

Current projects include working with Wisconsin University, who as part of a $1.8 Million programme funded by the US National Instrument Health (NIH) are investigating a range of novel tissue engineering techniques, including genetic transfection which is hoped will stimulate the formation of the bodies natural growth hormones to repair damaged tissue. DeMontfort are also assisting UCLA to investigate reinnervation therapy as a possible therapy for muscle paralysis. However the major partnership continues to be with UKE Hamburg, where the joint team are engaged in a series of projects to gain a better understanding of the bio-mechanics that underpins our ability to speak, and to develop further the new surgical device. The work at DeMontfort has been supported by the Royal Society, the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council.