The Royal Brompton Cystic Fibrosis (CF) Clinical Trials team celebrated three well-deserved wins at the North West London Clinical Research Awards, where they were recognised for their outstanding work carrying out ground-breaking CF research.
At yesterday’s inaugural North West London Clinical Research Awards, Professor Jane Davies, honorary consultant in paediatric respiratory medicine at Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, and several multidisciplinary members of the trials team accepted the award for outstanding collaborative working. This award recognised the team’s outstanding collaborative work delivering better clinical research to patients and the public. In addition, Professor Davies received the award for outstanding principal investigator, and Rebecca Dobra, Clinical Research Fellow, received the ‘Rising Star’ award.
Nominations were judged by a panel of staff and patient representatives from across North West London, as well as a patient representative.
The team, which has many years’ experience running trials of new medicines, is supported by the Cystic Fibrosis Trust’s Clinical Trials Accelerator Platform (CTAP).
The Trials Accelerator has given Royal Brompton Hospital the capacity to scale up on clinical trials in partnership with a network of other London CF Centres, which include King’s College, Great Ormond Street and the Barts Hospitals.
The partnership was established by Professor Davies, leader of the network, to share expertise and position trials optimally across each of the centres. The network is a flagship of the Trials Accelerator, with trial activity now taking place across the capital and providing valuable opportunities for referrals between teams. This way the London population of around 2,000 people with CF have fairer opportunities to take part in ground-breaking trials.
Professor Davies, who is also a Professor in Paediatric Respirology & Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, said yesterday afternoon: “We are delighted to have been recognised in this endeavour by the National Institute for Health Research's Clinical Research Network, North West London. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the Cystic Fibrosis Trust for their funding, our collaborators for all their hard work, but most of all the people with CF and their families, who have worked so hard with us to bring new drugs through trials to clinical reality. We really couldn’t have done any of it without you!”
The Clinical Trials Accelerator Platform is a UK-wide initiative, launched in 2017, to bring together CF centres, to increase participation and improve access to CF clinical trials.