Presenting the 2025 AstraZeneca Award Lecture, Professor Róisín Owens, discussed how cutting‑edge bioelectronic devices are transforming our ability to monitor and understand the gut–brain axis, revealing new insights into this complex biological system. 

Originally trained as a biochemist, Róisín is now Professor of Bioelectronics at the University of Cambridge in the department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology. Her move into Engineering disciplines was motivated by a frustration at the dearth of technologies available for continuous monitoring of biological systems in real time. After many years invested in developing adapted technologies, her team has developed a suite of electronic devices that can non-invasively record electrical signals in biological systems, in a variety of models, in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo. She and her team are using these bespoke devices to carry out functional measurements in gut-brain axis, looking at gut tissue permeability, motility and enteric nervous system function.

This webinar was chaired by Dr Femi Olorunniji, Reader in Synthetic Biology at Liverpool John Moores University.