Award Title: NIHR UCLH BRC
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Our BRC is a partnership between one of the UK s leading hospitals (University College London Hospitals - UCLH) and one of the leading Universities in the world (University College London - UCL). We want to ensure that advances in medical science led by UCL scientists are used to develop new and more effective treatments for patients. We will be trying to develop better ways to spot diseases earlier so there is a better chance of curing them. We will do this by using recent advances in understanding how our genes influence our risk of developing different diseases and which type of treatments are best suited to treat a particular disease. We are developing new and very sensitive ways of measuring different proteins in the blood to help show how and whether a treatment is working, not working, or causing problems. This is particularly important when we test new treatments so we can tell which ones are going to work and should be developed as new drugs. We are also developing new types of scans to look at the brain, heart, lungs and other internal organs in the kind of detail that has never before been possible. To make all of this work successfully we will establish effective ways to easily link all of this new information to the patients  medical records. This will help us better understand how disease develops and evolves and how treatments work in individual patients and the wider population.     Our BRC is very large and our aims are bold. We will tackle some of the most challenging and difficult diseases, where we believe we can make a big difference to patient outcomes over the next 5 years. These include cancer, dementia, heart disease and strokes, brain and nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease, muscular dystrophy and epilepsy. We will also develop better treatments for mental health problems, chronic lung diseases, and obesity, hearing and dental problems. We will open world-leading research centres at UCLH to allow us to deliver the newest treatments to NHS patients and conduct research studies alongside. One example is proton beam therapy. This is a new, more precise and powerful way of treating cancer with radiation. We will also open a new “cancer immunotherapy centre” that uses gene therapy to make a patient s own immune cells fight cancer cells just like they usually fight infections. We will have a special focus developing more rapid ways of diagnosing and treating life threatening infections and reducing antibiotic resistance. We will develop all of these new techniques and treatments over the next 3-4 years, many of which are ready to be tested in patients at UCLH. Beyond that time scale, we want our BRC to be recognised throughout the world as a leading centre for developing and delivering new treatments, so we can improve the outcomes for patients with the most difficult to treat diseases.

Lay Abstract: Our BRC is a partnership between one of the UK s leading hospitals (University College London Hospitals - UCLH) and one of the leading Universities in the world (University College London - UCL). We want to ensure that advances in medical science led by UCL scientists are used to develop new and more effective treatments for patients. We will be trying to develop better ways to spot diseases earlier so there is a better chance of curing them. We will do this by using recent advances in understanding how our genes influence our risk of developing different diseases and which type of treatments are best suited to treat a particular disease. We are developing new and very sensitive ways of measuring different proteins in the blood to help show how and whether a treatment is working, not working, or causing problems. This is particularly important when we test new treatments so we can tell which ones are going to work and should be developed as new drugs. We are also developing new types of scans to look at the brain, heart, lungs and other internal organs in the kind of detail that has never before been possible. To make all of this work successfully we will establish effective ways to easily link all of this new information to the patients  medical records. This will help us better understand how disease develops and evolves and how treatments work in individual patients and the wider population.     Our BRC is very large and our aims are bold. We will tackle some of the most challenging and difficult diseases, where we believe we can make a big difference to patient outcomes over the next 5 years. These include cancer, dementia, heart disease and strokes, brain and nervous system diseases such as multiple sclerosis, motor neuron disease, muscular dystrophy and epilepsy. We will also develop better treatments for mental health problems, chronic lung diseases, and obesity, hearing and dental problems. We will open world-leading research centres at UCLH to allow us to deliver the newest treatments to NHS patients and conduct research studies alongside. One example is proton beam therapy. This is a new, more precise and powerful way of treating cancer with radiation. We will also open a new “cancer immunotherapy centre” that uses gene therapy to make a patient s own immune cells fight cancer cells just like they usually fight infections. We will have a special focus developing more rapid ways of diagnosing and treating life threatening infections and reducing antibiotic resistance. We will develop all of these new techniques and treatments over the next 3-4 years, many of which are ready to be tested in patients at UCLH. Beyond that time scale, we want our BRC to be recognised throughout the world as a leading centre for developing and delivering new treatments, so we can improve the outcomes for patients with the most difficult to treat diseases.

Research Activity Codes: 4.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (DETECTION);5.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT);6.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT EVALUATION)
Health Categories: NEUROLOGICAL