Research at OUH gets £1m funding boost

Oxford University Hospitals (OUH) has received £1 million to fund state-of-the-art research facilities and equipment, much of it to allow its pharmacy team to meet growing demand.

The funding was awarded after a competitive process by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) as part of its capital funding to NHS organisations across England that are part of its wider infrastructure, such as Biomedical Research Centres (BRC) and Clinical Research Facilities (CRF).

"We are delighted to receive this funding, which will not only support NIHR-related research at OUH, but also increase the Trust's ability to leverage additional funding from research funders, including commercial companies," said Professor Adrian Banning, OUH Director of Research and Development.

"This funding gives us another opportunity to cement the fruitful collaboration between the Trust and the University of Oxford, who are working together to develop revolutionary new treatments that improve the lives of our patients."

OUH's pharmacy team, which is responsible for making up these new and often complex treatments, has reached capacity and needs new equipment and space to continue to support more clinical trials. While additional space was found, this needs to be refurbished to provide the necessary security and environmental controls for the storage of clinical trial supplies.

The NIHR funding will allow the purchase of a two-glove isolator, essential for preparing individual doses of trial medicines, and dedicated freezers, refrigerators and racking for storing these drugs, as well as substantial funding for the associated refurbishment to accommodate the equipment.

Michelle Taylor-Siddons, OUH Associate Director of Pharmacy for Clinical Trials, Research and Manufacturing, said: "This is an exciting time for the pharmacy clinical trials team, with the recent opening of the temporary Pharmacy Clinical Trials Unit (CTU), which has allowed us to handle and prepare state-of-the-art advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs), and with the increase in commercial drug trials.

"This additional funding will allow us to expand our capacity to trial ground-breaking new therapies and make us an attractive partner for companies developing these products. The income we receive from these trials will enable us to maintain all of this new equipment, but this injection of capital is vital for getting it up and running."

She added: "Ultimately, this is also great news for OUH patients, as it will mean more of them will have access to pioneering new treatments."
In addition to the support for pharmacy, OUH received funding to expand ultrasound imaging capability in the NIHR Oxford CRF for use in association with lymph node biopsies as part of clinical trials of novel therapeutics and vaccines.

"Our current research imaging resources need to keep pace with the expanding portfolio of clinical studies. Aspiration of lymph nodes alongside ultrasound is an expanding area of research, and this funding will allow more studies to take advantage of this increased capacity," Dr Katrina Pollock, an OUH consultant and researcher at the Oxford Vaccine Group, said.

One of the programmes that will benefit from this expansion is the LEGACY study, which is looking at the immune responses in lymph nodes in people of different ages and from different ethnic backgrounds, which could be vital when assessing the effectiveness of new vaccines.

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Another new piece of imaging equipment to be purchased with the NIHR award is a FibroScan, which measures liver fibrosis and predicts clinical outcomes for people with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease. This will allow the research team to move their trial participants to the NIHR Oxford Clinical Research Facility and away from OUH's radiology department where they are currently assessed.

The funding will also support the purchase of a new plate reader in the Oxford Centre for Haemostasis and Thrombosis, allowing more detailed analysis of samples from people with bleeding and clotting disorders.

Pictured: Pharmacy Clinical Trials Unit (CTU)