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Graftbolt A chance encounter opens a new window on a crucial area of sports medicine 44 LICENCE AGREEMENT Graftbolt won a PraxisUnico Impact Award in 2011 as "a model of multidisciplinary working involving clinicians, academics and technology transfer professionals." It is also a model of a smooth collaboration featuring three different organisations, the University, an NHS Trust and a company. Graftbolt was developed as a result of a collaboration between an NHS surgeon at the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Trust (UHSM) and University mechanical engineers. The University, in collaboration with TRUSTECH, the NHS Innovation Hub, funded the initial development work and the patent filing on the technology. The opportunity for this medical development came about when Dr Bin Wang, a mechanical engineer carrying out biomechanical research at the University, had a chance encounter with Mr Martyn Snow, an orthopaedic registrar, when the latter was performing mechanical testing as part of an MSc project. Mr Snow was interested in anterior cruciate ligament ('ACL') reconstruction and identified the challenge of graft fixation. The engineering solution, developed with Dr Mahmoud Chizari, was to introduce a sheath-and-screw design with expanding projections to compress the graft within the bone tunnels, forming a 'wedgetype' locking mechanism to prevent graft looseness and movement. TRUSTECH had a funding programme, the Pathfinder Development Fund, specifically formed to facilitate early stage product development within the north west's NHS. Following an approach to TRUSTECH from Martyn Snow, Pathfinder funds were made available to develop and optimise the design. This was largely experimental work combined with computer simulation and allowed the generation of a prototype on the basis of which a patent application was filed. This was a comparatively early stage project for the Pathfinder Fund, which usually funded projects closer to market. However, the TRUSTECH Board backed the case because of the nature of the opportunity and the