NIHR Royal Surrey CRF

Kent, Surrey and Sussex (KSS) have regional high priority unmet clinical needs driven by an aging population, with multiple comorbidities, requiring a strong research focus to improve health outcomes.

As the only CRN region without an NIHR CRF, a dedicated facility and staff is urgently needed to enhance and grow experimental and translational medical research.

The Royal Surrey NHS Foundation Trust (RSFT) and the University of Surrey (UoS) are fully committed to our partnership to create a regional NIHR CRF.

Through our already established collaboration, exemplified by our new UoS Health Partners, we have successfully delivered 5 early phase trials in international oncology and contributed to national COVID-19 UPH priority vaccine studies. Together we will build on existing capacity and create a hub for patient-centred clinical research for KSS.

Our partnership is centred on the purpose-built, co-located Surrey Clinical Research Facility.

UoS and RSFT are committed to providing significant funding in posts and infrastructure to leverage the NIHR CRF award, creating an enhanced facility dedicated to research and innovation in experimental and translational medicine that is unique in the Southeast of England.

Our ambition is to fulfil the “One Health, One Medicine” ethos of UoS Health Partners and develop, symbiotically, our Joint Research Office between Trust and University to grow and support research capacity.

RSFT has a strong positive research culture driven by core values and vision of driving excellence and impacting change.

As host for the KSS NIHR CRN, we are a highly motivated research active organisation with one of the highest numbers of NIHR investigators and Speciality Leads amongst KSS Trusts, and 225 active research studies spanning 18 of the 21 NIHR health research categories.

We undertake a range of complex early phase clinical trials including First in Human (FIH) with > 20 of our 82 CTIMPs being early phase.

Many of our CIs/PIs are internationally recognised as key opinion leaders; our international partners include Google Health, Yale University, Mount Sinai, and Heidelberg; our industrial collaborators include AstraZeneca, Novartis and Alexion. UoS CRF has a particular focus on FIH and phase 2a studies.

The CRF gained MHRA Phase 1 accreditation in 2010 and continues to work to these standards.

The CRF team with its extensive experience in leading Phase 1 trials will provide the crucial mentorship and support future and existing research leaders at the Trust and University to make the transition into early phase trials.

The vision of the NIHR Surrey CRF will be to attract, conduct and deliver high impact global studies in key therapeutic areas focusing on those of high regional prevalence.

Our combined research facilities and staff will complement each other and extend our multidisciplinary experimental medicine research portfolio with the strategic objective of increasing our activity in research and innovation in 4-5-years across a broad range of specialities including oncology, diabetes, endocrinology, ophthalmology, genetic rare diseases, neurology, immunology, liver diseases, artificial intelligence (AI), robotic surgery and nuclear medicine, whilst ensuring equity of access to patients including those from marginalised and underrepresented communities.