Title: NIHR Oxford BRC
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: NIHR funding, through the Oxford BRC, has transformed the capacity and culture for translational research across the Hospital-University partnership. The Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) is one of England s largest University Teaching Hospitals, now hosts 1800 active clinical studies, and is nationally-leading for patient recruitment to NIHR studies and for clinical trial initiation. The OUH has the most highly-cited publications of any NHS Trust (RAND Europe, 2004-13). The University of Oxford (UoO) is the world s top-ranked university for clinical, pre-clinical and health subjects (2015-16 World University Rankings), and is the UK s top-ranked university for research quality in REF 2014 for clinical medicine, public health/primary care, and neurosciences. UoO is the UK s most research-intensive university by grant and research contract income; in clinical medicine (&pound;242m/year) and across all biomedical science departments (&pound;472m-HESA 2013/14). This success is underpinned by sustained capital investment by both OUH and UoO including >&pound;500M over the last 10 years. Our 3 major teaching hospitals are now co-located within one mile and functionally integrated with all UoO Clinical Departments. Research facilities (>50,000m2) specifically foster exceptional cross-disciplinary collaborations: computing, mathematics, engineering and chemistry, cellular and molecular biology with medical disciplines in co-located laboratories, in turn linking directly to application and commercialisation through the Target Discovery Institute and the BioEscalator. The OUH-UoO partnership is thus embodied in an integrated clinical-academic campus, bringing together patients and researchers across all clinical disciplines: >5,000 researchers, 10,000 NHS staff and 1 million patients/year. The BRC has catalysed a new era in the Partnership s development, with statutory joint governance arrangements underpinning research management and links with industry, research funders and other BRCs and NIHR Translational Research Collaborations. The BRC forms the research core of the Oxford Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC), and catalyses innovation and adoption across the region through close working with the Oxford Academic Health Science Network (AHSN). Targeting NIHR support across the NHS-University Partnership generates outstanding added-value and productivity, with a 10-fold leverage of external funding across the Oxford BRC Research Themes, totalling &pound;800m. In the last 5 years, NIHR funding to the Oxford BRC has supported 2600 publications, 63 patent filings, and 9 spin out companies. The Partnership s overarching aims will build on BRC Themes that have developed key resources, platforms and opportunities for clinical application. By bringing together remodelled Themes into Clusters , we will enhance connectivity between disciplines and forge new capabilities, empowering the Oxford BRC to make ambitious, cross-disciplinary step-changes to address major healthcare challenges, at scale. Through these new Theme alignments, we will harness strengths across physical sciences (computing, engineering, chemistry) to address NHS challenges in electronic data analysis, remote care pathways, imaging, infection risk and antimicrobial resistance, medicine development and surgical interventions. We will harness strengths across population health sciences to address the NHS problem of chronic disease multi-morbidity in the ageing population. Harnessing strengths in immunology, genetics, cancer, infection, we will test new means of diagnosis and treatment across traditional disease taxonomies, for example in cancer immunotherapy, novel vaccines and therapeutic genome editing.

Lay abstract: NIHR funding, through the Oxford BRC, has transformed the capacity and culture for translational research across the Hospital-University partnership. The Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (OUH) is one of England s largest University Teaching Hospitals, now hosts 1800 active clinical studies, and is nationally-leading for patient recruitment to NIHR studies and for clinical trial initiation. The OUH has the most highly-cited publications of any NHS Trust (RAND Europe, 2004-13). The University of Oxford (UoO) is the world s top-ranked university for clinical, pre-clinical and health subjects (2015-16 World University Rankings), and is the UK s top-ranked university for research quality in REF 2014 for clinical medicine, public health/primary care, and neurosciences. UoO is the UK s most research-intensive university by grant and research contract income; in clinical medicine (&pound;242m/year) and across all biomedical science departments (&pound;472m-HESA 2013/14). This success is underpinned by sustained capital investment by both OUH and UoO including >&pound;500M over the last 10 years. Our 3 major teaching hospitals are now co-located within one mile and functionally integrated with all UoO Clinical Departments. Research facilities (>50,000m2) specifically foster exceptional cross-disciplinary collaborations: computing, mathematics, engineering and chemistry, cellular and molecular biology with medical disciplines in co-located laboratories, in turn linking directly to application and commercialisation through the Target Discovery Institute and the BioEscalator. The OUH-UoO partnership is thus embodied in an integrated clinical-academic campus, bringing together patients and researchers across all clinical disciplines: >5,000 researchers, 10,000 NHS staff and 1 million patients/year. The BRC has catalysed a new era in the Partnership s development, with statutory joint governance arrangements underpinning research management and links with industry, research funders and other BRCs and NIHR Translational Research Collaborations. The BRC forms the research core of the Oxford Academic Health Science Centre (AHSC), and catalyses innovation and adoption across the region through close working with the Oxford Academic Health Science Network (AHSN). Targeting NIHR support across the NHS-University Partnership generates outstanding added-value and productivity, with a 10-fold leverage of external funding across the Oxford BRC Research Themes, totalling &pound;800m. In the last 5 years, NIHR funding to the Oxford BRC has supported 2600 publications, 63 patent filings, and 9 spin out companies. The Partnership s overarching aims will build on BRC Themes that have developed key resources, platforms and opportunities for clinical application. By bringing together remodelled Themes into Clusters , we will enhance connectivity between disciplines and forge new capabilities, empowering the Oxford BRC to make ambitious, cross-disciplinary step-changes to address major healthcare challenges, at scale. Through these new Theme alignments, we will harness strengths across physical sciences (computing, engineering, chemistry) to address NHS challenges in electronic data analysis, remote care pathways, imaging, infection risk and antimicrobial resistance, medicine development and surgical interventions. We will harness strengths across population health sciences to address the NHS problem of chronic disease multi-morbidity in the ageing population. Harnessing strengths in immunology, genetics, cancer, infection, we will test new means of diagnosis and treatment across traditional disease taxonomies, for example in cancer immunotherapy, novel vaccines and therapeutic genome editing.

Research activity codes: 2.6 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (AETIOLOGY);5.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT DEVELOPMENT);6.9 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (TREATMENT EVALUATION)
Health categories: MUSCULOSKELETAL