NIHR Guy's & St Thomas' CRF

Our Clinical Research Facility is based in one of the NHS s largest hospitals, and we serve a diverse inner London population at three of our hospital sites, St Thomas (Lambeth), Guy s (Southwark) and since 2021 Royal Brompton (Chelsea). We recruit more than 1 in 10 of all patients entering CRF trials nationally.

Our research addresses a wide range of healthcare needs, from problems in the youngest children to diseases most common in the elderly.

It succeeds by embedding facilities close to the clinical services caring for these patients, such as our world-leading imaging capability. Involvement and engagement of patients and public provides essential guidance of our future research priorities.

We have recently expanded to 5 research-dedicated spaces, now offering more trials to children and to adults with chest diseases.

This will be coordinated with central governance and management, which for example provided the flexibility to deliver rapid support for COVID trials in 2020.

We recruited very effectively to coronavirus treatment trials and vaccines but were also able to protect essential research benefitting other patient groups.

The CRF continues to work closely with our Biomedical Research Centre (BRC), which drives laboratory research towards clinical testing, and we will deliver highly novel trials based on this emerging science.

The research focus of our CRF s 5 units will be organised in 3 Strategic Delivery Areas: (i) testing new drugs, (ii) developing sophisticated imaging and personalised medicine, and (iii) improving children s health.

Our trials directly benefit patients, both immediately (participation giving access to new treatment opportunities), and longer-term (through developing new standards of care to be delivered in the NHS). Our capacity allows us to conduct more than 12,500 patient visits annually in 330 studies. We specialise in trials testing new therapies and diagnostics for the first time in humans.

The CRF will continue to expand trial options for patients, in particular the testing of advanced therapies including cell and gene therapy, using the unrivalled equipment and support facilities co-located in our hospitals. Patients have already received several BRC-discovered experimental cell therapies in our CRF.

We prioritise quality in our CRF facilities and studies. This is essential for patient safety especially when testing new drugs for the first time. Our standards are recognised by accreditation of our Guy s Phase I Trials unit by the UK medicines regulator.

Our staff development makes an important contribution to this quality, with particular emphasis on training both new joiners and experienced staff in the delivery of complex trials.

The scale and scope of our hospitals activities and excellent NHS infrastructure will support the CRF in delivering value, as will our other dedicated research platforms such as advanced therapies manufacturing and clinical trials pharmacy.

Several companies have been founded directly from CRF studies developing BRC innovations, ranging from new imaging techniques to ground-breaking drug therapies.

In turn the CRF will continue to attract further external funding for clinical studies including grants and industry collaborations, amounting to £99.3m since our current £7.2m award.