Why the next government needs to support clinical research – for our health and the NHS – Cancer Research UK

Our latest survey of the UK’s clinical research workforce suggests there could possibly be hassle forward. However it additionally tells us how policymakers may reestablish the nation’s place as a world biomedical chief. Along with our Longer, Better Lives manifesto and programme for presidency, it might information us to a more healthy, wealthier Britain. Joe Kiely, one among our coverage advisors, talks by means of the findings. 

On 5 March 2020, docs in Studying recorded the UK’s first COVID dying. They knew what was occurring; they only didn’t have a approach to deal with it. Case numbers had doubled in two days, and so they had been solely starting to climb.  

UK analysis climbed greater. Deliberate, accredited and launched inside weeks, the Oxford RECOVERY trial went on to turn into the world’s largest trial of potential COVID therapies, recruiting tens of hundreds of sufferers throughout nearly 200 NHS websites.  

By summer season, due to RECOVERY, the UK turned the primary nation on the earth to determine {that a} steroid referred to as dexamethasone may assist deal with individuals with extreme COVID. Only a yr after the trial launched, that discovery had saved an estimated 1 million lives around the globe, together with 22,000 within the UK. 

COVID was an unprecedented state of affairs, and it might be difficult to launch trials for illnesses like most cancers so shortly. Nonetheless, Professor Martin Landray, who co-led RECOVERY, may already see the larger image. The UK generated the proof for dexamethasone as a result of a deal with medical analysis had been built-in throughout the NHS. If we held on to that, we could make slow and bureaucratic NHS trials a thing of the past.  

“I believe RECOVERY has set a brand new customary for what will be delivered,” Landray said, “and never only for pandemics. It could be a travesty if we went again to a state of affairs the place it takes years generally to get a trial off the bottom.” 

Our newest survey of the medical analysis workforce suggests there’s a danger that Landray’s worst case situation turns into a actuality. In response to nearly three-quarters of respondents, it’s turn into tougher to ship analysis in a well timed method within the final 18 months.