Research and Innovation

group shot of research staff

Research and Innovation

What is clinical research?

Clinical research is the development of improved healthcare, by using evidence to further our knowledge to create new treatments and/or approaches that are both safe and effective. We have around 200 clinical research studies running in our Trust, at various stages of activity; including studies that are open and recruiting patients. Between 1 April 2017 and 13 December 2019 we have recruited 3,452 patients to ethically approved research carried out within the Trust.

Taking part in research is not only about testing new drugs or treatments – we may also carry out research that using information from questionnaires, or laboratory tests. We do this to understand more about the impact of diseases, quality of life, and to discover better ways of understanding the effect of certain treatments.

We could not support hosting clinical research alone. We work in partnership with the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), who are funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). Our Trust is within the geography of the North Thames Clinical Research Network (CRN). We are also grateful to receive on-going support of the King George and Queen’s Hospital Charity.

Our Commitment to Research

The NHS has a legal duty to promote research, and show evidence, whilst finding innovative outcomes to improve patient care, be it to do with new treatments, medicines, processes, or technologies that ultimately lead to an all-round better service provided by the NHS. Our research department commits to the implementation of the NHS long term plan. Research itself is core business in accordance with the NHS constitution, and forms part of the assessment of the well-led aspect of the CQC inspection.

Contact us

If you have any questions about research, please contact us at bhrut.development.research@nhs.net. We are also on Twitter; you can follow us at @BHRUT_Research

Urgent Public Health and Covid-19

Practical studies

The Covid-19 pandemic necessitated that research into potential therapies occurred in parallel to the outbreak and, indeed, was part of the treatment options offered to patients. The national research strategy prioritised Covid-19 research and such studies were badged as Urgent Public Health (UPH) research. Every hospital in England was encouraged to participate in these studies.

One of the biggest of these UPH trials we are participating in is the RECOVERY Trial. This trial evaluated potential emerging therapies that had shown some signs of improving outcomes for patients hospitalised with Covid-19 but needed to be fully assessed in randomised controlled trials to fully ascertain whether there was benefit from their use.

Patients with Covid-19 in our Trust were approached and offered the chance to take part in the trial as it offered them participation in research and access to therapies being evaluated, but also enabled them to help others.

Since the opening of this study at our trust, we have recruited 328 patients to this trial. We are proud to say that we and our patients have taken part in this study and have contributed to discovering treatments such as Dexamethasone and Tocilizumab, which have been proven to save lives. We have also contributed to data that has ruled out futile treatments for Covid-19 such as lopinivir/ritonivir, hydroxychloroquine, colchicine and convalescent plasma. Without this latter research, patients would have continued to be given drugs that carry side effects and do not improve patient outcome.

Some hospitalised patients went on to develop severe Covid-19 and were admitted to intensive care. At this point, these patients were offered the chance to additionally participate in another trial called REMAP-CAP which was aiming to identify therapies specific to those who were critically unwell with Covid-19. Patients were eligible to take part within 24 hours of admission to the intensive care (some ward patients were also eligible for certain aspects of the trial) and were able to have access to multiple therapies being evaluated including steroids, convalescent plasma, blood thinners, and immunotherapy.

The trial looked at how drugs worked in combination and the nature of the trial was such that patients were most likely to be allocated a treatment in the trial that was showing a signal towards benefit. We are proud to have participated in this trial as it has been pivotal to providing evidence for the use of Tocilizumab and therapeutic dose blood thinners in certain subsets of Covid-19 patients. Our recruitment to this trial to date is 19 patients.

We continue to offer the RECOVERY and REMAP-CAP trials to our patients and remain at the forefront with the national effort to discover therapies for Covid-19. Vaccination research is needed to prevent the illness from occurring, but therapies and a better understanding of the disease are needed to help those who go on to develop the illness despite the national vaccination effort.

We must of course thank our principal investigator, Mandeep Phull as well as her research team, and must also pay thanks to the patients who participated and the wonderful ward staff who have been very accommodating and helpful in assisting in the delivery of this research throughout the pandemic.

 

Observational studies

As well as practical studies, there are also studies that are more observation based, looking through medical history of a patient’s time in hospital, to measure a variety of different things. One Urgent Public Health observational clinical study we have been recently assigned to is known as ISARIC. As it is a matter of Urgent Public Health, patients are not selected for recruitment. In fact, we are required to collect the data from each individual admitted to the hospital who meets the required criteria. To date, we have recorded approximately 2,447 individual admissions to this survey. This number does not reflect the total number of patients admitted to our trust with Covid-19, as patients who have left the hospital but are readmitted at a later date also have the second instance recorded.

The summary of this trial, following the document changes to allow for Covid-19 research on 24/02/2020, reads as follows:

“New infectious agents, such as the SARS coronavirus, new strains of influenza, and HIV, continually appear and require new investigations to understand how the disease works and how it interacts with the person infected. There is an urgent need to conduct coordinated clinical research relating to the Covid-19 outbreak to learn more about the virus and to provide evidence to help decide treatments and to ensure an effective public health response.

"This study will provide rapid, coordinated clinical investigation of patients with confirmed Covid-19 infection. It will look at how the virus reproduces and is excreted by the body, how the body responds to infection and treatment over time and how the immune system responds. The study has been designed to ensure that as much data as possible is collected and shared rapidly in a format that can be easily added together, tabulated and analysed across many different settings globally. It is designed to be flexible to ensure the best acceptance by health care organisations.”

For further information about this trial, head to the ISARIC website.

 

*Please note – information is accurate at time of recording, May 2021*

Clinical Trials

If you wish to join a research study currently open at our Trust, you must first be under the care of this hospital. You should discuss your wishes to be involved in research with your doctor or clinical team as there are strict criteria for each research study and some studies may be more appropriate for you than others. The decision to participate in a research study remains yours, but you may wish to discuss your participation with your family, friends and/or GP.

BHRUT Research Performance - OPE  
NIHR ID Project Full title Site status Main Speciality BHRUT Division
10416 The UK Multiple Sclerosis Register Open Neurological Disorders  
17199 Immediate coronary angiography after out of hospital cardiac arrest (ARREST) Open Cardiovascular Disease Acute Medicine
43094 Clinical Educators in Emergency Departments - CEED Open Trauma and Emergency Care Acute Medicine
32889 Optimisation of Peri-operative Cardiovascular Management to Improve Surgical Outcome II (OPTIMISE II) Trial: Open, multi-centre, randomised controlled trial of cardiac output-guided fluid therapy with low dose inotrope infusion compared to usual care in patients undergoing major elective gastrointestinal surgery. Open Anaesthesia, Perioperative Medicine and Pain Management Anaesthetics
33869 FLO-ELA Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Anaesthesia, Perioperative Medicine and Pain Management Anaesthetics
43238 Critical illness related cardiac arrest (CIRCA) Open Critical Care Anaesthetics
34023 Canadian Institutes of Health Research Open > Critical Care Anaesthetics
N/A UNITE-COVID-19 Open Critical Care Anaesthetics
38197 Randomized, Embedded, Multifactorial, Adaptive Platform trial for Community-Acquired Pneumonia Open Critical Care Anaesthetics
30540 Genetics of susceptibility and mortality in critical care (GenOMICC) Open Critical Care Anaesthetics
37390 BLING III study Set up on hold - Covid 19 Critical Care Anaesthetics
18218 AML 19: Adults with acute myeloid leukaemia or high-risk myelodysplastic syndrome Suspended Cancer Cancer
1409 STAMPEDE: Systemic Therapy in Advancing or Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Evaluation of Drug Efficacy Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
16675 FLAIR: Front-Line therapy in CLL: Assessment of Ibrutinib + Rituximab Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
15938 AML 18: A Trial for Older Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and High Risk Myelodysplastic Syndrome Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
36735 SUMMIT: Lung cancer screening study using low dose CT to support the development of blood tests for early cancer detection Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
40503 Phase 3, Randomized, Double-blind Study to Compare the Efficacy and Safety of Pembrolizumab (MK-3475) in Combination with Lenvatinib (E7080/MK-7902) Versus Pembrolizumab and Matching Placebo as First Line Treatment for Locally Advanced or Metastatic Urothelial Carcinoma in Cisplatin-ineligible Participants Whose Tumors Express PD- L1, and in Participants Ineligible for Any Platinum-containing Chemotherapy Regardless of PD- L1 Expression (LEAP-011) Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
18137 PARADIGM OlaPArib And RADiotherapy In newly-diagnosed GlioblastoMa: Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Cancer Cancer and CSS
30967 ROAM Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Cancer Cancer and CSS
20443 TRACC - Tracking mutations in cell free tumour DNA to predict Relapse in Early Colorectal Cancer Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
42281 Myeloma XIV (FiTNEss) Set up on hold - Covid 19 Cancer Cancer and CSS
42313 MONITOR Set up on hold - Covid 19 Cancer Cancer and CSS
44365 THE SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN BRAIN TUMOURS Set up on hold - Covid 19 Cancer Cancer and CSS
34487 Systematic Genetic Testing For Personalised Ovarian Cancer Therapy (SIGNPOST) Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
15909 Mesothelioma and Radical Surgery 2: a multicentre randomised trial comparing (extended) pleurectomy decortication versus no (extended) pleurectomy decortication for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MARS 2) Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
18621 Phase III randomised controlled trial Comparing Alternative Regimens for escalating treatment of intermediate and high-risk oropharyngeal cancer Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
30433 Randomised, phase II/III, 3 stage trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the addition of olaparib to platinum-based neoadjuvant chemotherapy in breast cancer patients with TNBC and/or gBRCA Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
34473 A Cohort Study To Establish the Prevalence of Mutations in Patients with CML Who Meet the ELN Criteria for Warning or Failure and Patients With Ph+ALL With Detectable BCR-ABL1 Currently Being Treated With First or Subsequent TKI Therapy in the UK Using Next Generation Sequencing  Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
39645 Quality of Life After Bladder Cancer (Q-ABC):
A comparison of patient related outcomes following radical surgery and radiotherapy
Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
40432 A Phase III Randomized, Double-Blind Placebo Controlled, Multi-Regional, International Study of Durvalumab in Combination with Gemcitabine Plus Cisplatin Versus Placebo in Combination with Gemcitabine Plus Cisplatin for Patients With First-Line Advanced Biliary Tract Cancers Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
41941 Randomised phase II/III study of Rituximab and Ibrutinib (RI) versus Dexamethasone, Rituximab and Cyclophosphamide (DRC) as initial therapy for Waldenström's macroglobulinaemia Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
869 UK Genetic Prostate Cancer Study Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
1471 Radiogenomics: assessment of polymorphisms for predicting the effects of radiotherapy Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
9812 ICON8 and ICON8B - ICON8 Trial Programme (as per protocol v5 dated 17/12/2014) Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
10357 Leukaemia Lymphoma Research and NCRI Working Group Pick a Winner Programme (LI1) Trial Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
12255 Optimal Personalised Treatment of early breast cancer using Multiparameter Analysis Open Cancer Cancer and CSS
4961 United Kingdom Adult Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP) Registry: An Investigation of Disease Progression, Treatment Effectiveness, and Co-morbid Conditions Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Haematology Cancer and CSS
37452 INSPIRE Suspended Neurological Disorders Cancer and CSS
N/A Neurological Complications Associated with Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) Virus: MRI and CT Features Open Neurological Disorders Cancer and CSS
40554 RIvaroxaban for Stroke patients with AntiPhospholipid Syndrome Set up on hold - Covid 19 Non Malignant Haematology Cancer and CSS
31694 Phase II Randomised, Double Blind, Placebo Controlled Trial of Neoadjuvant Artesunate in Stage II/III Colorectal Cancer (NeoART trial) Suspended Surgery Cancer and CSS
N/A Occupational Stress of Health Care Professionals at BHRUT during the Covid-19 Pandemic Open Mental Health Corporate
31185 NOAH-AFNET 6: Non-vitamin K antagonist Oral anticoagulants in patients with Atrial High rate episodes Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Cardiovascular Disease Specialist Medicine
17302 PROgressive Supranuclear Palsy CorTicoBasal Syndrome Mulitple System Atrophy Longitudinal Study UK (PROSPECTMUK) Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Dementias and Neurodegeneration Specialist Medicine
18437 Parkinson's Families Project (PFP) Open Dementias and Neurodegeneration Specialist Medicine
40906 CHIEF-PD STUDY Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Dementias and Neurodegeneration Specialist Medicine
19837 DexEnceph: A pragmatic, randomised, controlled, observer­blind trial comparing clinical outcomes in adults who receive 
dexamethasone alongside standard treatment versus standard 
treatment alone for Herpes Simplex Virus encephalitis.
Open Infection Specialist Medicine
45388 Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) Open Infection Specialist Medicine
14152 ISARIC: Clinical Characterisation Protocol for Severe Emerging Infection Open Infection Specialist Medicine
35831 MS-STAT2 Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Neurological Disorders Specialist Medicine
37685 The EMPA-KIDNEY Study Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Renal Specialist Medicine
6726 National Studies of Rare Kidney Diseases Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Renal Specialist Medicine
37304 RETAKE - Return to Work After Stroke Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Stroke Specialist Medicine
33908 SALIVA TO PREDICT DISEASE RISK (version 1) Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Cancer Surgery
20664 IBD Bioresource Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Gastroenterology Surgery
43521 EAGLE: ESCP sAfe-anastomosis proGramme in colorectaL surgEry Reviewing Suspension - Covid 19 Surgery Surgery
35821 UK Cohort study to Investigate the prevention of Parastomal Hernia Suspended Surgery Surgery
45676 Neonatal Complications of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Study Open Children Women and Child Health
34058 Linagliptin and empagliflozin in children and adolescents (DINAMO) Suspended Children Women and Child Health
39733 PReCePT Study – A cluster randomised trial evaluating the impact of an enhanced support implementation of the PReCePT quality improvement toolkit to increase the uptake of magnesium sulphate in pre-term deliveries for the prevention of neurodisabilities Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
  Creating positive working and learning environments utilising the Formative Change Laboratory in Obstetrics and Gynaecology Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
39971 The POOL study Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
5774 Continuation of SAFE (Incorporating RAPID) Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
14162 Maternal and Perinatal Outcomes of Pandemic Influenza in Pregnancy Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
20626 GEM3: A double blind placebo controlled trial of a combination of methotrexate and gefitinib versus methotrexate alone as a treatment for ectopic pregnancy Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
14362 The Cleft Collective Cohort Studies Open Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health
18346 The Cerclage Suture Type for an Insufficient Cervix and its effect on Health outcomes (C-STICH) Recruitment on Hold - Covid 19 Reproductive Health and Childbirth Women and Child Health

Download Internet Trials List 13.08.20 [xlsx] 19KB

To search for Clinical Research Studies nationwide, please use the NIHR’s search below. Please be advised, all clinical research studies have an inclusion/exclusion criteria to ensure patient safety. There may be trials that you feel you could be suitable for but please speak with your nurse or doctor, who will be able to advise you further.

Research champions

Patients and the public are at the heart of everything we do, and who would be better to describe the experience of participating in research than those who have taken part in a study themselves?

What is a research champion?

Research Champions volunteer their time to help spread the word about health and care research to patients and the public, and to help promote across those groups who are currently less likely to take part in research. They also help research and healthcare staff understand more about the experiences of those who take part in research.

Anybody can be a Research Champion; you don’t have to have participated in a research study before. Watch below as Dr. William van’t Hoff, Clinical Director for NHS Engagement, talks about the initiative.

Find out more information about the roles of the NIHR Research Champion and how to take part.

Alternatively, contact Ben Sartoris, ben.sartoris@nhs.net for further information.

Our team

Our research team works over a number of different clinical areas. If you have a question or want to discuss about a certain clinical specialty, please contact the Research and Innovation Department either on: 01708 435 000 ext. 2372 / 2762 or email our generic mailbox:

bhrut.development.research@nhs.net

To read about some of our research team, who participated in our Trust’s ‘In Conversation With...’, please view the links below to read the articles.

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