'We're giving patients access to exciting new treatments and innovations' - The Yorkshire research centres supporting the health and wealth of the nation

Here, we take a look at some of the NIHR infrastructure in Yorkshire, which provides a platform to enable early stage and applied research, bringing together expertise, specialist facilities, a research workforce and support services.

Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs)

There are 20 NIHR BRCs, which bring together academics in universities with clinicians in NHS trusts to translate early scientific breakthroughs into potential new treatments, diagnostic tools and health technologies.

Two of these centres sit within our region, in Leeds and Sheffield.

The former is hosted by Leeds NHS Teaching Hospitals in partnership with the Universities of Leeds and York, whilst the latter is hosted by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with The University of Sheffield.

Prof Philip Conaghan is the NIHR Leeds BRC Director. He says: “The average time of translation from a bright idea to it getting through to the clinic can be about 17 years. And a big push has been made in the last decade to try and shorten that time and try and get innovations through to humans in a quicker way. The BRCs are part of that.”

In Leeds, the centre was initially dedicated to research on musculoskeletal disease but now also has specialisms in antimicrobial resistance and infection, cardiometabolic disease (aiming to address the challenge of heart failure in people with diabetes and its precursors), haematology (with a focus on improving the detection and treatment of blood cancers), pathology (where the aim is to improve the detection and treatment of gastrointestinal cancer), and surgical technologies.

Sheffield’s BRC is focused on improving the lives of people with long-term health conditions. Its research covers four key themes - neuroscience (aiming to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of chronic neurological disorders), cardiovascular disease, infection and immunity, and imaging and engineering for health.

Professor Chris McDermott is its director. He says: “What we do in the BRC is we take those early discoveries that the scientists are making and move them from the labs into patients to see if they work or there are signals that they work…The impact is giving patients access to exciting new treatments and innovations.”

HealthTech Research Centres (HRCs)

There are 14 NIHR HRCs, located in NHS organisations across England, each focused on the development of healthcare technologies, which it is hoped will improve the effectiveness and the quality of health and care services.

The centres support software developers, and medical device, digital technology and diagnostics companies to design, evaluate and validate technological innovations. The aim is to address healthcare challenges, whilst providing financial value or improving operational efficiency.

The HealthTech Research Centre Network provides strategic leadership and coordination for the HRCs and is coordinated in Yorkshire by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, where one of the HRCs is also based.

The HRC there is called Devices for Dignity and focuses on long term conditions including diabetes, kidney care, women’s health and neurological conditions.

Wendy Tindale is its director. She says: “We focus on identifying unmet needs and then look at how we can address those unmet needs through technology…Then what we do is prioritise those needs where we think we can have the biggest impact and we bring teams together in order to develop solutions.

“Our specific focus in Devices for Dignity is to help people with long-term conditions. So we very much take a holistic approach thinking not just about the conditions that they’ve got but also about their lives and how they live their lives…It is all about helping people to live with dignity and independence.”

In Leeds, there is a HRC in accelerated surgical care, which focuses on the quicker diagnosis and treatment of surgical conditions and with safe recovery in the community.

Yorkshire also hosts a third HRC, the only one dedicated to children and young people. The NIHR HRC in Paediatrics and Child Health is hosted by Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust and focuses on areas including preventing pre-term birth and birth-related brain injury, long-term conditions and rare diseases in childhood, and the safe and effective transition from paediatric to adult healthcare.

Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs)

NIHR’s 28 CRF are purpose-built facilities in NHS hospitals where researchers can deliver early phase, experimental medicine and high-risk studies.

They offer a range of services to help researchers and life science organisations to design and deliver these clinical trials, including first-in-patient trials and those that require dedicated space and specialist expertise.

There are two NIHR CRFs in Yorkshire, one hosted by Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust in collaboration with the University of Leeds and the other hosted by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the University of Sheffield. Sheffield Children’s also has its own separate clinical research facility.

Professor Chris Twelves, clinical director of the Leeds CRF says: “I am a cancer doctor, but my ambition in the CRF isn’t just to improve outcomes for people with cancer or any other individual disease. Rather, our ambition is to embed experimental medicine trials in everyday activities in the NHS, increasing the proportion of our patients from across the region and with a range of conditions who have the chance to go into these clinical trials.”

Commercial Research Delivery Centres (CRDCs)

There are 15 of these in England managed by the NIHR and they work to deliver commercially sponsored research, “boosting the global competitiveness of the UK life sciences sector and contributing to the health and wealth of the nation”.

A key part of the remit of the centres is to increase participant recruitment by expanding trials beyond large hospital trusts into community settings and underserved regions.

There are two of these centres in Yorkshire - in Sheffield and Bradford.

The NIHR Bradford and West Yorkshire CRDC, based at Bradford Teaching Hospitals, with partner sites at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust and Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust, focuses on disease areas particularly relevant to West Yorkshire communities, including respiratory conditions, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and oncology.

When it launched last March, deputy director Dr John Ashcroft said: “Patients involved in commercial research often have the opportunity to access new and innovative treatments or therapies that are not yet widely available to the public. This can be especially important for those with conditions that are hard to treat with existing options.

“Clinical trials associated with commercial research help advance medical knowledge and technology, which can lead to better, more effective treatments in the future.”

Director Professor Dinesh Saralaya recently told The Yorkshire Post: “We want to cover the entire body so patients can take part in trials of any speciality and we will map this trial profile to the health needs of our population.”

The NIHR Sheffield Children’s CRDC is the only CRDC in the UK dedicated to delivering commercial clinical trials treating children and young people.

When it opened last year, director Professor Michael J Cork said: “Over the past ten years we have increased our work with the top pharmaceutical companies to lead clinical trials to bring innovative new medicines to children. These trials have transformed the lives of many children and young people, who have been given a new life they never had before treatment.

“The CRDC funding will allow us to substantially increase the number of commercial clinical trials it can support in a variety of specialties. A major focus will be on early intervention with babies, with innovative drugs, to alter the course and/or prevent the development of diseases. This will provide the opportunity to change the lives of children and young people before they’re available in an NHS clinic.”

Applied Research Collaborations (ARCs)

NIHR ARCs support applied research that responds to, and meets, the needs of local populations and health and care systems.

There are 15 partnerships between NHS providers, universities, charities, local authorities, Health Innovation Networks and other organisations and these ARCs undertake work to increase the rate at which research findings are implemented into practice.

The NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Yorkshire and Humber focuses on the themes of older people, mental health, healthy families and urgent care.

It is hosted within the Bradford Institute for Health Research at Bradford Royal Infirmary.

Programme manager Sally Bridges says: “The type of work we do is about how we take things that we know work and actually get them into the system in an equitable way so that everybody can benefit from them…There’s no point in developing things that are new or can improve care if we are not actually going to invest in actually implementing them.

“It’s hugely important to have ARC hosted by an NHS organisation…because you’ve already then got that relationship and you can see on the ground what we need to be doing for communities and how we can best implement solutions into the system.”

Patient Safety Research Collaborations (PSRCs)

These are partnerships between universities and NHS trusts that support patient safety research.

The NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Patient Safety Research Collaboration is hosted by Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and explores effective patient safety practices and improving organisational patient safety culture and practice.

Regional Research Delivery Networks (RRDNs)

The Research Delivery Network (RDN), funded by the Department of Health and Social Care, is made up of 12 RRDNs which support the delivery of research in the NHS and across a range of other health and social care settings.

The NIHR Yorkshire and Humber Regional Research Delivery Network works to give researchers and delivery teams practical support so that more research takes place in the region and more people can take part.