̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Cambridge Biomedical Campus

Cambridge Biomedical Campus celebrates 60 years with £2bn boost to UK economy

cjb250 — Fri, 02 Sep 2022 10:07:30 +0000

̽��ֱ��key findings of the report are:

̽��ֱ��campus supported an aggregate economic footprint of £2.2 billion worth of Gross Value Added to the UK economy and that as well as being the largest employment site in Cambridge, over 15,000 additional roles are supported across the regional supply chain and local businesses.
For every 10 jobs directly generated by organisations on the CBC, a further 2.7 jobs are supported within Cambridge City and South Cambridgeshire; one in every six jobs in the local authority areas are either directly or indirectly supported by the campus.
Employment on site is growing much faster than the rest of the UK and that £721m is spent by employees across the regional economy.

Looking at the wider economic picture, the research highlights that in 2021 the site reported a collaborative operating income of £1.9 billion, as well as contributing £291million to the Exchequer through tax revenues.

In addition to the new report, a series of events are planned to celebrate the success of the campus spanning 60 years and to tell more stories about the globally significant research that goes on.

Dr Kristin-Anne Rutter, Executive Director at Cambridge Biomedical Campus, said: “ ̽��ֱ��economic impact report for the first time demonstrates the importance of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus to the region, and to the thousands of people who work here and rely on the organisations, whether it’s as a patient or someone working on the site. ̽��ֱ��success we have on the site is not just limited to improved healthcare and treatments for patients – we generate jobs and income for businesses across Cambridge and the East of England. We do this through collaboration, with research, industry and the NHS working together to drive innovation which is then shared.

“ ̽��ֱ��report is an important milestone, so too is our 60th anniversary and throughout September we’ll be highlighting some of the amazing developments and ideas which have happened since Addenbrookes hospital and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology arrived on the Hills Road site. We’ll be sharing how the campus has grown and how science is taken from laboratories into hospitals, to diagnose and treat patients with world-leading innovative healthcare.”

Alongside the major economic impact of CBC, the research that takes place on the campus has very real and direct healthcare benefits, fuelled by innovation and discoveries that sit at the very forefront of life sciences technology and knowhow.

A new economic impact report details the financial contributions of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC), which celebrates its 60th anniversary this autumn. ̽��ֱ��independent report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) for the first time calculates the economic benefits of CBC also highlights the health and research benefits for the region.

̽��ֱ��success we have on the site is not just limited to improved healthcare and treatments for patients – we generate jobs and income for businesses across Cambridge and the East of England

Kristin-Anne Rutter

Aerial shot of Cambridge Biomedical Campus

Life-saving treatments

Below are some of the case studies of how patients have been given, or are set to benefit from life-saving treatments, discovered and developed at CBC but with the potential to literally change the lives of people across the world.

Cytosponge: A ‘sponge on a string’ test to detect oesophageal cancer

Around 9,100 people are diagnosed with oesophageal cancer each year in the UK. A big challenge with this type of cancer is that many people don’t realise there’s a problem until they start to have trouble swallowing. Often, these symptoms aren’t recognisable until a later stage in the disease.

But there may be an opportunity to detect the disease earlier. Some people develop a condition – called Barrett’s oesophagus – prior to developing into cancer. Barrett’s oesophagus is much more common than oesophageal cancer, and although it will only become cancer in a handful of cases, it presents an opportunity for doctors to spot a problem early and intervene before cancer develops. But the typical test for Barrett’s oesophagus, endoscopy, is both invasive and expensive.

Enter the Cytosponge.Cytosponge-TFF3 test is a ‘sponge on a string’ device coupled with a laboratory test called TFF3 developed by scientists funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Cancer Research UK – a simple, quick and affordable test for Barrett’s oesophagus that can be done in a GP surgery.

Ethanol breath biopsy clinical trial for early lung cancer detection

A new clinical trial has launched at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge which is using ethanol (an alcohol) detected in exhaled breath as a potential tool to diagnose lung cancer earlier. ̽��ֱ��EVOLUTION trial is recruiting patients who definitely have lung cancer and healthy volunteers who definitely do not.
A liquid solution containing a metabolic probe is administered intravenously, travels around the body and when it reacts with a lung tumour causes the release of ethanol. After a set amount of time, patients breathe at regular intervals into a special mask which collects the ethanol which is then analysed in the laboratory. ̽��ֱ��eVOC probe (Exogenous Volatile Organic Compound) has been developed by Cambridge company Owlstone Medical, who have collaborated with Royal Papworth Hospital’s thoracic oncology research team for previous breath biopsy studies.

Changing the future of ovarian cancer

Each year, about 7,500 women in the UK are diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and around 5,000 will have the most aggressive form of the disease. ̽��ֱ��cure rate for women with ovarian cancer is very low, despite new medicines coming into the clinic. Only 43% of women in England survive five years beyond their ovarian cancer diagnosis, compared with more than 80% of people for more common cancers, such as breast (85%) and prostate (87%). This is because the disease is often diagnosed late, treatment options are limited, and many women develop resistance to current therapies. Research by Professors James Brenton and Evis Sala, at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, aims to address this.

Life-changing artificial pancreas

An artificial pancreas developed by Cambridge researchers is helping protect very young children with type 1 diabetes at a particularly vulnerable time of their lives.

̽��ֱ��artificial pancreas uses an algorithm - CamAPS FX – to determine the amount of insulin administered by a device worn by the child. It is available through a number of NHS trusts across the UK, including Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and the team hope it will soon be available even more widely.

Adapted from a press release by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Health Partners

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge launches roadmap to support future growth of life sciences cluster

cjb250 — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 09:49:05 +0000

̽��ֱ��roadmap sets out a clear plan to create a bridge between two of Cambridge’s historical strengths — biomedical research and cutting-edge technology — and bring these specialisms together to develop new treatments and health tech with real world applications. ̽��ֱ��solutions in the roadmap are scalable beyond Cambridge and also applicable to other disciplines and sectors.

Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “Cambridge has a deep and rich history of discovery and collaboration, and its interdisciplinary environment is the perfect testbed for new models of innovation in the life sciences. Our roadmap sets out a plan to do just that and will ensure that Cambridge remains a global leader in health technology into the next generation.

“This will require us to pioneer new ways of working and creating connections between different institutions across disciplines, be they academic or private enterprise. Such a model has been proven to work at a small scale – our proposal in the roadmap is to scale this up and apply it across the cluster and beyond.”

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� sits at the heart of the so-called ‘Cambridge cluster’, in which more than 5,300 knowledge-intensive firms employ more than 67,000 people and generate £18 billion in turnover. Cambridge has the highest number of patent applications per 100,000 residents in the UK.

̽��ֱ��mission of the ̽��ֱ�� is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. This includes cultivating and delivering excellent research and world-leading innovation and training of the next generation of highly skilled researchers and entrepreneurs, thereby underpinning the UK's economic growth and competitiveness.

Professor Tony Kouzarides, Director of the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “ ̽��ֱ��pandemic has clearly shown the importance of rapid innovation in healthcare. We are determined to harness the power of innovation, creativity and collaboration in Cambridge, and apply this towards solving some of the biggest medical challenges facing the country, and the world.”

̽��ֱ��Connect: Health Tech roadmap is a result of consultation with major stakeholders and a series of road-mapping workshops with the Cambridge community. It aims to shape the future success of the Cambridge cluster in health tech through a supportive and dynamic ecosystem that aligns with the needs of the community.

̽��ֱ��roadmap includes ambitious steps to build strong foundations for the Cambridge cluster for the next 20 years and will support the region's economic recovery post-pandemic and bring cutting-edge research, businesses and innovators together to be better prepared and connected for the future. Connect: Health Tech will also increase access to the Cambridge ecosystem extending reach and helping to level up growth and investment across the East of England and the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.

One of the major recommendations in the report is to create and foster connectivity at the interface between medicine and technology and across sectors. This recommendation has been piloted by expanding the Cambridge cluster from a physical community to a digital one.

̽��ֱ��COVID19 pandemic has required the creation of an innovative model of access and navigation to Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��digital platform simplifies navigation of the Cambridge research community and enables new companies based all over the world to access expertise and knowledge across the ̽��ֱ�� with the aim of increasing inward investment in the life sciences. It also pilots an approach to navigation and connectivity that can be scaled up across the Arc and the UK. This new way of working will speed up the development of new healthcare innovations and technologies that the NHS will use in years to come.

Connect: Health Tech is a Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� initiative funded by Research England. Connect: Health Tech UEZ has been created to build a highly effective interdisciplinary bridge between two Cambridge research hubs and beyond: the West science and technology hub anchored at the Maxwell Centre and South biomedical hub anchored at the Milner Therapeutics Institute. ̽��ֱ��bridge will bring together and integrate a community from across the ̽��ֱ��, research institutes, NHS, industry, investors, local and national Government, with a focus on medtech, digital health and therapeutics, to create opportunities that will transform ideas at the interface between medicine and technology into reality.

Read Creating a ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone for Cambridge across the life and physical sciences

Connect: Health Tech, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Enterprise Zone, has today launched a roadmap, ‘Creating a ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone for Cambridge across the life and physical sciences’, that examines the challenges faced in futureproofing and sustaining the growth of the life sciences cluster to maintain Cambridge as a global centre of excellence for health tech.

Cambridge has a deep and rich history of discovery and collaboration, and its interdisciplinary environment is the perfect testbed for new models of innovation in the life sciences

Andy Neely

AstraZeneca

Cambridge Biomedical Campus

Yes

̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone aims to drive innovation across Cambridge

cjb250 — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 09:01:19 +0000

Research England, part of UK Research and Innovation, today announced 20 new ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zones (UEZs) aimed at helping universities stimulate growth in their local economies, providing vital support for innovative new companies and creating jobs in emerging industries. ̽��ֱ��£20 million investment will strengthen collaborative ties between universities and businesses.

Cambridge’s UEZ, Greater Cambridge Health Tech Connect, will look at testing and integrating inter-disciplinary models of incubation across West Cambridge, where many of the ̽��ֱ��’s physical sciences and engineering departments, including the Maxwell Centre and the Institute for Manufacturing, are based, and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus in the South. It will address real world challenges, including unmet medical needs, using innovative thinking across disciplines.

“Our aim is to create new ways of collaborating across physics, technology, engineering, biology and medicine and use this to drive innovation in healthcare, manufacturing and engineering,” explains Dr Kathryn Chapman, Deputy Director at the Milner Therapeutics Institute.

“This Enterprise Zone will explore and scale up new and existing models of business incubation, strengthening the interdisciplinary bridge between two major Cambridge research hubs. This will drive new research and development, and deliver a model that can be applied more widely to support company incubation.”

̽��ֱ��announcement has been welcomed by Professor Andy Neely, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Enterprise and Business Relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, who led the application. “Cambridge has a rich history of scientific discovery and innovation, and its innovation ecosystem is recognised as world leading. This new government funding will help us build and strengthen connections across often very different disciplines, further accelerating innovation across the city and beyond.”

Funding for the UEZs has been announced alongside an investment of £78 million in the second wave of UK Research and Innovation’s Future Leaders Fellowships. Dr Daniel Field from the Department of Earth Sciences and Dr Jamie Blundell from the Department of Oncology have both been named as recipients of new funding.

Universities Minister Chris Skidmore said: “Delivering on our research and innovation ambitions means putting people first, whether they are just starting out in their career or are leading major projects in academia or industry.

“These inspirational Future Leaders Fellows will generate the ideas of the future, helping to shape science and research for the 21st century. But to realise the full potential of these discoveries, their ideas need to be taken out of the lab and turned into real products and services, where they can actually change people’s lives for the better.

“That’s why we are creating 20 new ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zones, helping local start-ups to co-locate in universities to build the businesses of the future – all inspired by university research.”

Update 2021:

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone has now launched.

Cambridge is to establish a ̽��ֱ�� Enterprise Zone as part of a new government initiative announced today by Universities Minister Chris Skidmore.

Cambridge has a rich history of scientific discovery and innovation, and its innovation ecosystem is recognised as world leading. This new government funding will help us build and strengthen connections across often very different disciplines, further accelerating innovation across the city and beyond

Andy Neely

Aerial view of Cambridge Biomedical Campus

Yes

£42m new research institute to boost evidence on improving care in the NHS

cjb250 — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:26:59 +0000

̽��ֱ��Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute (THIS Institute), led by the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, is made possible by the largest single grant ever made by the Health Foundation, an independent charity. ̽��ֱ��new institute is founded on the principle that efforts to improve care should always be based on the best quality of evidence. Some of that evidence will be created by NHS patients and staff themselves, using innovative citizen science methods in large-scale research projects.

Director of THIS Institute Professor Mary Dixon-Woods, said: “If you ask people to describe the future of healthcare, they might describe a shiny vision of new treatments and technologies. These kinds of innovations are important. But how healthcare is organised and delivered, including its basic systems and processes, has perhaps just as much impact, and sometimes more, on patient outcomes and experience.”

Dr Jennifer Dixon, Chief Executive of the Health Foundation, said: “ ̽��ֱ��UK population clearly wants a high quality and sustainable NHS into the future. Understanding what works, in which contexts and why, is crucial, as is obtaining that evidence fast so it can be acted on. There couldn’t be a more important time to do this, and that is why the Health Foundation has put its money where its mouth is.”

One way the institute will create the evidence-base is through citizen science. Using methods already used in other areas such as biology and astronomy, THIS Institute is building a digital platform to crowdsource research ideas and collect research data from NHS staff and patients, including their opinions on the right indicators of quality of care and their views on equipment design.

Professor Dixon-Woods, Director, THIS Institute, adds: “Tackling healthcare challenges needs to involve a greater variety of people with diverse experience: the institute is looking for expertise in new places. Some of this expertise will come directly from patients – us, you, me – working alongside healthcare staff and other professionals such as engineers and designers.”

̽��ֱ��institute will be based at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, alongside Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and world-leading research institutes. It is made possible by a ten-year grant from the Health Foundation, whose mission is to bring about better health and healthcare for people in the UK.

Press release from ̽��ֱ��Healthcare Improvement Studies Institute.

A new research institute launching today is seeking to create a world-leading asset for the NHS by improving the science behind healthcare organisation and delivery.

DSC09477-2

kristin klein

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Cambridge launches new biomedical collaboration across borders and disciplinary boundaries

ts657 — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 00:01:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��collaboration, between the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and Sunway Medical Centre in Malaysia, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Papworth Hospital, will establish a joint programme between the ̽��ֱ��’s School of Clinical Medicine and Sunway ̽��ֱ��.

̽��ֱ��programme will enable the sharing of academic excellence through regular academic visits and exchanges, and offer scientific and clinical training opportunities at Cambridge for outstanding postgraduates from Sunway.

As part of the collaboration’s programme, Sunway Medical Centre will establish a Clinical Research Centre that will become a regional site partner for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, working with Cambridge on clinical research.

̽��ֱ��clinical research centre at Bandar Sunway in Malaysia will enable the recruitment of patients to international trials led from Cambridge, and help develop an integrated approach to healthcare and clinical research in Malaysia.

At the heart of the collaboration will be the new Capella Building located on the rapidly expanding Cambridge Biomedical Campus, the centrepiece of the largest biotech cluster outside the United States. Researchers in the building will work on some of the world’s most pressing health challenges including TB and HIV, rheumatoid arthritis and type-1 diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease and multiple sclerosis.

This state of the art research space will drive biomedical research across stem cells, infectious disease and immunology that will help shape the future of medicine. ̽��ֱ��Capella Building will house three major research institutes: ̽��ֱ��Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, the Wellcome Trust-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and the Milner Therapeutics Institute.

̽��ֱ��flagship new building, itself a collaboration between the Schools of Clinical Medicine and the Biological Sciences, will co-locate ground-breaking research already taking place in Cambridge across therapeutics, diagnostic and regenerative medicine, and enable interdisciplinary collaboration that will lead to breakthroughs in how diseases are diagnosed and treated.

This will include transforming our understanding of how infectious diseases including TB, HIV/Aids, human cytomegalovirus, and Zika interact with humans – and therefore how they can be better treated.

Alongside this, scientists in Capella will drive the development of new treatments in immune-related diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and type-1 diabetes.

Stem cell scientists will deliver new therapeutic approaches for leukaemia, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and degenerative conditions such as multiple sclerosis.

̽��ֱ��partnership will also provide excellent opportunities for training, education and research in the field of cardiothoracic medicine and surgery, with leading clinicians from Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire set to collaborate with nurses and consultants based at the Sunway Medical Centre in Malaysia.

Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah was in Cambridge last week to mark the signing of the agreement between the ̽��ֱ�� and the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation.

A long-standing supporter of Collegiate Cambridge, member of the ̽��ֱ��’s Guild of Benefactors, and Fellow Benefactor of Gonville & Caius College, Dr Cheah said: “Today marks a very special moment in time for all of us at Sunway as we begin collaborations with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Papworth Hospital.

“It is a further testament to the increasingly close bonds between Sunway and Cambridge. Sunway and the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation are committed to promoting excellence in sectors such as education and health care.

“We are determined to raise standards and provide the best possible to not just Malaysians, but the 625-million strong population of the ASEAN region.”

Professor Patrick Maxwell, Regius Professor of Physic and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine, said: “As the world of medicine changes more rapidly than perhaps ever before, it is clear that collaboration will be the key to success.

“For this reason, I am delighted that we are entering into a new collaboration with Sunway, an institution which shares our unswerving commitment to excellence in medicine and medical education.

“ ̽��ֱ��new Capella will be at the centre point of this collaboration.

“ ̽��ֱ��research in this exceptional new building – through the Stem Cell Institute, the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases, and the Milner Therapeutics Institute – will have a real and profound effect on the health and lives of millions of people in the UK, Malaysia and around the world.”

Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Stephen Toope said: “ ̽��ֱ��agreements we have signed with the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and Sunway Medical Centre mark the beginning of a new stage in an exceptional partnership.

“Our collaboration reflects the fact that addressing the most pressing issues facing humanity today requires working across both borders and disciplinary boundaries.

“No single country, discipline, or institution can have exclusive purchase on how we attack today’s fundamental problems.

“Working together, Cambridge ̽��ֱ��, the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and Sunway Medical Centre are poised to make a signal contribution to some of the world’s major medical challenge"

Stephen Posey, Chief Executive Officer, Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “I am truly excited by what we could achieve by working more closely with Sunway Medical Centre, the Jeffrey Cheah Foundation and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge to advance teaching and research in the field of cardiothoracic medicine.

“Heart and lung diseases are a global problem to which we must find global solutions.

“This partnership is an excellent example of how global leaders in medicine and research can work together for the benefit of patients across the world.”

A new collaboration between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Sunway Medical Centre in Malaysia will see researchers and clinicians from the two countries working together across borders and disciplinary divides to tackle some of the world’s major health challenges.

No single country, discipline, or institution can have exclusive purchase on how we attack today’s fundamental problems.

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Stephen Posey, Professor Patrick Maxwell, Tan Sri Dr Jeffrey Cheah, Professor Stephen Toope

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Cambridge ready to lead UK’s industrial renaissance

cjb250 — Wed, 30 Aug 2017 11:27:25 +0000

With its pre-eminent strengths in life sciences, the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) will be looking to work with the Government and partners in a number of identified areas:

̽��ֱ��development of a MedTech Cluster where clinicians and technology companies will work together to develop devices and software to improve healthcare.
A datahub to take advantage of the electronic patient record systems being developed in the NHS which creates a huge pool of real time information to help researchers with their work.
Assisting with the ‘scaling up’ of companies to ensure they become global players.
Support the growth in skills and the creation of new jobs across the East of England.
Additional projects looking at cancer and other specialities where Cambridge is strong.

These areas are part of a number of developments taking place on a Campus which is home to world class companies, research organisations and hospitals who are dedicated to improving healthcare in the UK and throughout the world.

Over the next few months, specific projects will be refined and developed ahead of a final decision being taken by the Government regarding funding and support.

Malcolm Lowe-Lauri, Executive Director of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Health Partners, said: “Cambridge is the capital of UK life science with over 400 companies now employing in excess of 13,000 people. This is a fantastic base from which to work that has been acknowledged by the Government today. Simply put, we have the machinery to drive growth not just in the city but across the East of England.

“ ̽��ֱ��proximity, talent and backgrounds of the key organisations in Cambridge allow for new technology, innovation and ‘data lakes’ to be harnessed effectively. Nowhere in the UK and rarely across the world do you find this unique set of conditions. By putting forward projects to develop a MedTech hub, ‘datalakes’ and assist with the early detection of cancer, we can move to rapidly develop this sector, improving skills and creating employment in Cambridgeshire and throughout the region.”

Dr Jane Osbourn, Vice President at MedImmune, AstraZeneca’s global biologics R&D arm, said: “AstraZeneca shares the Government’s objective of ensuring the UK remains a great place for science and innovation post-Brexit. AstraZeneca is the UK’s leading pure play pharmaceutical company with strategic investment in the UK, Europe and globally. We are pleased to have played a leadership role in the development of the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy.

“Our global corporate headquarters are located at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and we are investing over £500m in a strategic Research and Development hub here. This reflects the importance we attribute to the science ecosystem, skills base, and academic excellence of the world-leading sector cluster in Cambridge, within the UK’s 'golden triangle' for life sciences. We welcome the importance attributed to infrastructure in the strategy which is critical for the 15,000 employees, academics, patients and visitors coming to the CBC every day.”

Roland Sinker, Chief Executive at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Our hospital is ideally placed to ensure patients benefit from the announcements made today by the Government. ̽��ֱ��advantages of being on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus are obvious as we benefit from world-leading research while providing our partners in pharma and medical technology with access to patients and the data they need. As a collective, we are working to meet the demands of the world’s healthcare challenges through the strength of systems which allow ideas to flourish, the physical space which is available for expansion and the international connections we have.”

Press release from Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Health Partners.

With the official launch today of the next stage in the Government’s Life Sciences Industrial Strategy, Cambridge can have a key role to deliver jobs, growth and investment for the East of England.

Gillian Griffiths

Killer T cells

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Yes

Drugs: how to pick a winner in clinical trials

lw355 — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 11:00:12 +0000

“Did not meet primary endpoint.”

Prosaic words, but they can mean a billion dollar failure has just happened.

̽��ֱ��average cost of taking a scientific discovery all the way through to a drug on a shelf is enormous – last year it was estimated at $2.6 billion by the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development.

One reason the figure is so high is because it also includes the cost of failure. Recent years have seen some very high-profile failures of drug candidates that either did not meet the ‘primary endpoint’ (they didn’t work) or had their trials halted owing to serious side effects.

“It’s only natural that some drugs will fail in clinical trials – the process exists to ensure that treatments are safe and effective for patients,” says Professor Ian Wilkinson, Director of the Cambridge Clinical Trials Unit (CCTU) on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. “But what’s unexpected is the high number of drugs that fail in phase III. You’d think that by this stage the molecule would be a sufficiently good candidate to make it through.”

He explains that failures in phases I and II – when the drug is tested for safety and dosage in healthy volunteers and patients – are inevitable. However, a great many molecules don’t make it through phase III, the stage at which the drug’s effectiveness is tested in large numbers of patients before regulatory approval is given. In fact only 10–20% of drugs that enter phase I are ultimately licensed.

“ ̽��ֱ��problem with failing at phase III is it’s very expensive – a single drug trial can cost around $500m.”

He continues: “There’s a human impact for the thousands of patients who enrolled on the trial. For patients with cancer, it’s sometimes their last available treatment option,” says Wilkinson. “It’s also really unhelpful economically. Pharma companies have less money to put back into R&D, and it becomes even harder to fund drug development.”

This is why Wilkinson, along with a team of clinicians, scientists and pharmaceutical collaborators, together with statisticians at the Medical Research Council Biostatistics Unit, has been taking a hard look at the early phases of clinical trials. Their aim is to ask what can be done to get an early indication that a potential drug will make it to market.

“Traditionally, clinical trials have been organised to test safety first and efficacy last,” he explains. “It’s a cautious step-by-step approach adopted to ensure that pharma companies can satisfy regulators that the drug is safe.

“For many drugs this has worked well. But we are in a landscape where drug targets are more challenging – think for instance of conditions like psychiatric disorders and dementia. Leaving questions of whether a drug is effective to the final stages is now too risky and expensive.”

On any one day, the CCTU (one of the UK units accredited by the National Institute for Health Research) might be coordinating up to 20 trials in various phases for potential treatments for cancer, stroke, infections, dementia, heart attack, and so on.

Many of the trials are now designed with what Wilkinson calls “added value” built in at very early stages to give indications of whether the drug might work. This could include a biomarker that shows a drug for cirrhosis is reaching the liver, or a drug for heart disease is lowering cholesterol. “These are read-outs. They don’t show the drug works for the disease, but if the results are negative then there’s no point in progressing to later stages.”

̽��ֱ��trials are also run ‘adaptively’. “We look at data for each person as it comes in… once we have enough information to guide us, we make a decision that might change the trial. It’s a quite different approach to the traditional rigidity of trials. It maximises the value of information a trial can yield.”

In recent years, pharmaceutical companies like GSK and AstraZeneca (AZ) have championed the need for rigorous trial design to weed out likely failures earlier in the process.

GSK has its only trials unit in the UK in the same building as the CCTU. There, GSK researchers work alongside Cambridge clinicians and scientists on first-in-man studies. A more targeted approach to testing medicines in patients is a key component of a Strategic Partnership between GSK, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH), which has the long-term ambition of jointly delivering new medicines to patients in the next five to ten years.

A few years ago, AZ analysed its drug pipeline before embarking on a major revision of its R&D strategy to increase the chance of successful transition to phase III and beyond. One area AZ identified as being crucial to success is to identify a causal relationship between target and disease. This might seem obvious but so-called mistaken causation has led to late failures right across the drugs industry. ̽��ֱ��usual cause is confounding – where a factor that does not itself cause a disease is associated with factors that do increase disease risk.

Professor John Danesh and colleagues at the Department of Public Health and Primary Care have pioneered a new way of finding evidence for causality before a patient is ever involved. Called ‘Mendelian randomisation’, it’s akin to a trial carried out by nature itself.

“Misinterpreting correlation as causation is a big problem,” explains Dr James Peters, who works with Danesh. “An increase in a protein biomarker in patients with atherosclerosis might suggest it’s important in the disease, but it’s not a valid drug target unless it plays a causal role. ̽��ֱ��conventional way to test this is to block the protein with a drug in a clinical trial, which is expensive, time-consuming and not always ethical.

“In phase III trials, the randomisation of participants helps to average out all differences apart from whether they are receiving the drug. Instead, we take advantage of the natural randomisation of genetic variants that occurs during reproduction.”

Some genetic variants can increase or decrease certain proteins that have been linked to a disease. If these variants can be identified – by computationally analysing enormous genetic datasets – then researchers can compare groups of people to see whether having the variant also increases the risk of a disease.

̽��ֱ��team has used this method to look retrospectively at why two phase III trials for a potential cardiovascular drug failed. “ ̽��ֱ��genetic evidence showed that the drug target was not valid,” says Peters. “We would have advised against taking this drug to a clinical trial.”

But it’s not just about predicting failures, Danesh’s team is picking winners. Evidence for the role of an inflammatory protein in atherosclerosis has now resulted in a clinical trial to see if an arthritis drug can be repurposed for atherosclerosis.

̽��ֱ��researchers are helping industrial collaborators to prioritise potential drug targets and predict side effects. They also hope to expand their capabilities to test large numbers of variants for different potential targets in an automated fashion – a high-throughput approach to therapeutic target prioritisation.

Meanwhile, Wilkinson is planning ahead to avoid a different type of limitation: expertise. “There is a lack of individuals trained to design and deliver innovative clinical trials, and this is now impacting on drug development,” he explains.

Last year, an Experimental Medicine Training Initiative was launched to train medics how to run innovative clinical trials. Wilkinson is its Director and it’s supported by the ̽��ֱ�� in partnership with CUH, Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, and AZ/MedImmune and GSK.

“We all believe that the failure rate for drug candidates making it through phase III is unacceptably high,” he says. “Less than one in a thousand molecules discovered in the lab make it through to being a drug. We want to be sure that we can answer the billion dollar question of which are most likely to be winners.”

Read more about research on future therapeutics in Research Horizons magazine.

When a drug fails late on in clinical trials it’s a major setback for launching new medicines. It can cost millions, even billions, of research and development funds. Now, an ‘adaptive’ approach to clinical trials and a genetic tool for predicting success are increasing the odds of picking a winner.

We all believe that the failure rate for drug candidates making it through phase III is unacceptably high. We want to be sure that we can answer the billion dollar question of which are most likely to be winners.

Ian Wilkinson

Gatis Gribusts

Medication

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How close are you to a fruit fly?

amb206 — Wed, 08 Jul 2015 08:22:55 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

Each morning a yeasty smell drifts through the basement of the Genetics Building. Research technician Huai Xue Lin arrives early to cook the food needed for millions of fruit flies. ̽��ֱ��Drosophila is not a picky eater: it thrives on a mix of cornmeal, sugar and yeast, mixed with agar to make it solid. ̽��ֱ��fly kitchen operates an impressive takeaway service, supplying not just the Fly Lab on the first floor but also Drosophila research facilities all over Cambridge.

As their name suggests, fruit flies are the small insects that appear on hot summer days to feast on the surface of ripening fruit – or sup on any wine or beer left out. Once Drosophila detect something sweet and sticky, they are annoyingly persistent but they pose no threat to human health.

Fruit flies are used by research groups throughout Cambridge to learn more about how genes determine development. That’s because, despite looking remarkably dissimilar to us, Drosophila have much the same fundamental biological make-up as humans. Significantly for medical scientists, they share 75% of the genes that cause disease in the human population.

Drosophila are not hard to raise in huge numbers. Their eggs hatch within 24 hours. ̽��ֱ��larva that crawls out eats and grows non-stop for about four days. It then pupates for around four days before emerging as an adult fly. ̽��ֱ��fly is sexually mature and ready to mate within a few hours.

Because fruit flies reproduce so fast, researchers use them to track ways in which traits, including genetic abnormalities, are transferred down many generations in a relatively short time. Drosophila are also easy to anaesthetise using carbon dioxide – and make a speedy recovery. These characteristics combine to make the fruit fly a valuable model for research into genetics and associated fields.

̽��ֱ��potential offered by Drosophila as a tool for understanding the principles of heredity was first explored in the USA early in the 20^th century when Thomas Hunt Morgan won the Nobel Prize "for his discoveries concerning the role played by the chromosome in heredity". British scientists began to use fruit flies as a research organism after the Second World War with the first fruit fly facility established in Cambridge in the 1960s.

Professor Michael Ashburner recalls the early days of Drosophila research in Cambridge: the flies were reared in milk bottles in a temporary lab located in suburban Cambridge. Ashburner and colleagues carried out extensive fundamental work to determine how genes control complex traits such as height and weight. He went on to become a pioneer in the use of computing in biology, developing a standardised vocabulary that enables scientists’ observations to be read by a computer.

As a key player in the sequencing of Drosophila by a public-private consortium, Ashburner helped to ensure that the research was made publicly available. His book Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced is a compelling account of the highs and lows involved in a hugely ambitious project involving a number of institutions.

Today the Fly Lab is a modern facility on the first floor of the Genetics Building. Along one wall are storage units housing thousands of tubes containing live fruit flies. ̽��ֱ��tubes provide a ‘library’ of ‘stocks’ with each stock relating to a particular research project. ̽��ֱ��Lab is equipped with 24 work stations for researchers working on aspects of genetics. In addition, batches of Drosophila are also supplied to research groups working elsewhere in Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��fields covered range from neurodegenerative disease to parasite interactions. ̽��ֱ��most recent addition to the Lab’s clients is the Hannon Group at Cambridge Biomedical Campus which is using Drosophila as one of many pathways for developing new methods for cancer diagnosis, treatment and prevention.

Fly Lab manager, Dr Simon Collier, says: “Flies can be used to address a wide variety of problems in biology and medicine. ̽��ֱ��Fly Lab provides a resource not just to fly workers in Cambridge but elsewhere in the UK and Europe. I believe we can be especially helpful to research groups that are largely clinical but also want to incorporate the fly model into their research.”

A quick look at the website FlyBase gives a picture of the myriad ways in which the humble fruit fly is contributing to medical science. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge branch of FlyBase is headed by Professor Nick Brown who also leads a research lab in the Gurdon Institute.

̽��ֱ��Brown Lab uses Drosophila to investigate how bodies are built and how, during the development of an organism, cells attach to each other by means of ‘cell adhesion’. ̽��ֱ��processes which determine the growth of an adult organism from a single cell, the fertilised egg, are extremely complex and involve receptors known as ‘integrins’. By understanding the ways in which ‘faults’ can occur in fruit flies, the group will be able to contribute to the development of treatments for human conditions such as skin blistering diseases, muscular dystrophies and aberrant blood clotting.

A lab headed by Professor Steve Russell is investigating the genes that control the activity of other genes, particularly a group called ‘Sox genes’. These types of genes are important in both humans and flies as they often control the behaviour of tissues by regulating the particular set of genes active in each cell. ̽��ֱ��Russell lab is looking particularly at development of the central nervous system and gonads. These are just two of many groups using Drosophila as a model in research.

A side room at the Fly Lab is set aside for Sang Chan, the Lab’s Microinjection Specialist. He injects fly eggs with DNA so that researchers can produce gene mutations in flies that will enable them to track the functional effects of genes – and thus identify the genes regulating the production of particular protein configurations or the behaviour of other genes.

Looking through a powerful microscope, he uses an instrument called a ‘micromanipulator’ to push a needle into a fly egg about 0.5mm in length (roughly the size of a coarse grain of sand) in order to inject DNA roughly equivalent in volume to a millionth of a drop of water. It took Chan six months to acquire the fine motor skills needed to carry out this delicate task with reliable accuracy.

Running the Fly Lab is a round-the-clock enterprise that requires constant attention to detail. ̽��ֱ��storage units are kept at a constant temperature of 25 degrees, the temperature at which Drosophila thrive best. Double doors and other precautions prevent flies from escaping: many are transgenic and, as such, considered a potential ecological hazard. ̽��ֱ��Lab has strict hygiene regulations designed to keep the presence of mites (which live on fruit flies) to a minimum.

“More is known about the biology of Drosophila than possibly any other animal on earth. For this reason alone, I expect that Drosophila will remain a vital model organism for many decades to come. ̽��ֱ��short generation time, relatively simple genome and ease of culture are as useful today as they were in Thomas Morgan’s time,” says Collier. “Our increasingly molecular and cellular perspective on human disease has brought medical research to a level where humans and flies are understood to be remarkably similar and means the fly can be an effective model for human disease.”

Next in the Cambridge Animal Alphabet: G is for the world's second fastest animal, which flanks the escutcheons of King's College Chapel and is playing an important role in research into treatments for osteosarcoma.

Inset images: D. melanogaster dorsal open wings (Sylwester Chyb and Nicolas Gompel); Actin cables in Drosophila nurse cells during late-oogenesis. At this stage, nurse cells die and extrude their cytoplasm into the developing oocyte. This process is required for viable eggs to develop. Cyan = DNA (DAPI), highlighting the nuclei; Magenta = Actin (Phalloidin), highlighting enrichments of Actin that form across the cells (Tim Weil and Anna York-Andersen, Weil Lab); Drosophila embryo - the large stripe that you see along the centre of the embryo is the developing nervous system and subsets of neurones have been labelled in green (Holly Ironfield and Eva Higginbotham).

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, F is for Fruit Fly and the myriad ways that they are helping with medical research.

More is known about the biology of Drosophila than possibly any other animal on earth. I expect that Drosophila will remain a vital model organism for many decades to come.

Simon Collier

Tim Weil and Anna York-Andersen, Weil Lab

̽��ֱ��reproductive machinery of Drosophila melanogaster. Two ovaries (upper right) connected by the oviduct.

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