NIHR Liverpool University Hospitals CRF

The Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (LUHFT)-Clinical Research Facility (CRF) provides the hub for adult experimental medicines in Liverpool City Region (LCR) and Cheshire & Merseyside more widely.

One of only two MHRA Phase 1 accredited units in England and Wales, with three consultant clinical pharmacologists at the helm, it ensures the highest standards of safety for the development of new medicines.

This, in tandem with Liverpool Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC), makes for a powerful Liverpool nucleus for leadership in experimental medicine.

It is underpinned by relationships with world-class expertise and facilities established at University of Liverpool (UoL), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and Liverpool Health Partners (LHP).

The CRF also acts as the focus for translational medicine emerging through the Infection Innovation Consortium (iiCON), a £19.5M UKRI-funded academic-industry regional collaboration for the development of new products against infection.

The Liverpool Early Phase Hub (LEPH) will be established to build upon the success of the AGILE clinical trial platform, launched specifically to test new Covid-19 treatments faster than ever before.

The CRF was instrumental in the design and set-up of AGILE, is the largest recruiting centre and hosts the chief investigators for the first three compounds in development.

Combined with the new Pandemic Institute at UoL, our goal is to become the leading CRF for the development of new medicines to fight infection and tackle antibiotic resistance.

NIHR funding will allow us to expand across two additional sites, Clatterbridge Cancer Centre (CCC) and Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital (LHCH) to seriously address the needs of our local population and provide better, safer medicines for people with cancer, heart disease and infection.

This brings major benefits to patients and the NHS through early access to new therapies and significant opportunities to inform the product development pipelines of pharmaceutical companies.

The CRF is well positioned with Industry including a long track record with Labcorp and newly with IQVIA and Paraxel along with the Northern Research Hub including the Medicines Evaluation Unit (MEU) and MAC Clinical Research in Manchester. We will continue to leverage these relationships to develop new academic-industry collaborations.

Additionally, we are sharing our extensive experience and expertise across the newly formed North West CRF Alliance by uniting our strengths with that of Alder Hey Children s Hospital, Manchester and Lancashire NIHR CRFs to ensure we share best practice and training opportunities to expand the pool of early phase investigators.

Furthermore, we will undertake in-depth analysis into our recruitment practices with genuine patient and public involvement to understand, for the first time, the real barriers and facilitators to the historic under-representation of specific populations in experimental research. This includes those at extremes of age, females, ethnicities, learning difficulties and disabilities.