Welcome to your July ECMC newsletter 30 July#34 |
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Restarting our clinical portfolio
As I am sure many of you understand too well, it turns out that restarting a portfolio consisting of many thousands of studies is substantially harder than stopping it. We have been working with the Leads to understand the impact of the epidemic and how re-start is progressing. It is clear that re-start will take some months to complete - it will happen at different rates and the overall capacity of the clinical networks will be constrained for some time to come. |
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The good news is that all sites have re-opened some, if not all, of their ECMC studies and there are even a few sites that have been able to open new studies. I want to thank our Centre Business Leads and ECMC Leads for their contribution in helping us understand how the network is faring at this time and to help us identify opportunities for us to work together as a network to get trials back up and running, and available to patients.
More good news - the last three months have seen a large increase in the number of commercial study opportunities coming into the programme office, which we send out to the network via our Expression of Interest (EOI) process. We are currently refreshing the forms we use to help streamline the EOI process by improving the information provided to the network to make assessment easier. We are planning to switch to the new forms by the end of the summer. Thank you to all the members of the network who helped with the review of these forms.
I was also really pleased to get a strong endorsement from the Leads for re-opening EC Trial Finder – a sure signal that recruitment and referrals are increasing, which can only be good news for patients.
As you might have seen in recent news reports, the pandemic has created huge challenges in the charity sector. Cancer Research UK is predicting a drop in income of £160m for 2020/21 alone. Unfortunately, this has resulted in the charity having to make cuts to the planned research budget for the next 4 to 5 years. There will also be a substantial reduction in the workforce in the Charity, including some redundancies in coming weeks and months. Whilst this is a worrying and uncertain time for everyone, we will continue to work with you to ensure that patients can access the important and innovative studies that you support. |
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How scientists and quality assurance managers are contributing toward cancer research in the ECMC network
With the ease of lockdown and the reopening of research labs, we spoke to scientists and quality assurance (QA) managers to understand more about their roles, asking them to share what they are looking forward to and their thoughts on upcoming challenges.
Catherine Pointer (translational scientist at Southamption ECMC) and Lulu Cvetkovic (QA manager at Newcastle ECMC) spoke of the importance of accurate and reliable pre-clinical laboratory investigations to better inform clinical trial setup and safety. In addition, they shared what they are looking forward to upon the return to the labs, and how they think the lab research environment will change after the pandemic.
Read their interviews |
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National Lung Matrix Trial highlights the need for a new approach in treating complex cancers The National Lung Matrix Trial is the world's largest precision medicine clinical trial for non-small-cell lung cancer patients. Funded by Cancer Research UK and supported by our Stratified Medicine Programme Phase 2 (SMP2) screening platform, the latest findings of the trial have highlighted important factors that will need to be considered in the next wave of precision medicine studies, particularly in treating genomically complicated cancers.
Led by the University of Birmingham's Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit, the latest results, published in Nature, reveal key learnings on the use of precision medicine. These include: the importance of appropriate pre-clinical work in defining appropriate biomarker-drug combinations to test in the clinic, ensuring that the best drugs available are used to hit genomic targets, the scale of attrition from large screening platforms, and the importance of analysing and publishing outcome data of an ongoing study.
Read the paper |
Improving survival for children with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma Findings from a clinical trial coordinated across 12 countries, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that the addition of rituximab to a standard chemotherapy protocol, markedly prolongs event-free survival and overall survival among children and adolescents with high-grade, high-risk, mature B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (B-NHL).
Amos Burke (Addenbrooke's Hospital and CRUK Cambridge Centre Paediatric Cancer Programme), who led the UK arm of the 'Inter-B-NHL Ritux 2020' trial funded by Cancer Research UK, said "These are practice changing results which define a new standard for high-risk B-NHL in children and young adults. It represents the most significant improvements in survivals since the 1990s for this disease."
Learn more |
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Guidelines for the collection of research samples during and after the COVID-19 pandemic Cancer Research UK has collected some of the guidelines from official sources, including Public Health England, and the CDC on the collection and processing of human specimens for clinical and translational research during and after the COVID-19 pandemic into a single document. This document does not cover sample handling for the propagation, culturing or direct work on SARS-CoV-2 for diagnostic or research purposes.
This document can be downloaded from the ECMC Website. |
New MRC Experimental Medicine Panel LaunchedThe MRC have announced the establishment of a new Experimental Medicine Panel. Projects supported by this Panel will have a strong mechanistic and experimental focus, with an emphasis on perturbing the human system. This Panel will also help support some target validation activities and will meet twice annually to assess applications.
The first funding call is now open until 16 September 2020. More information can be found on the following web pages: Experimental Medicine Funding Call Learn more about the new panel If you are interested or have any questions, get in touch with the team via email: [email protected] |
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Launch of CID podcasts Following on from recommendations in the paper 'Effective delivery of Complex Innovative Design (CID) cancer trials - a consensus statement', the ECMC Programme Office and Health Research Authority have collaborated to produce a set of podcasts to inform and educate a range of stakeholders on the common questions around the management and delivery of CID trials. The NIHR has existing podcasts around innovation in trial design and study delivery so we have joined forces to create a 'playlist' of podcasts aimed at anyone with an interest in working on or reviewing CID trials. These podcasts are being released on a weekly basis - follow our Twitter account @ECMC_UK to keep up to date. Links to the podcasts can also be found on the ECMC Website. |
Investigating Paediatric Study Start Up The ECMC Paediatric Network has undertaken a project to investigate challenges in the set-up of early phase trials in the UK. The first phase of this work involved consultation interviews examining the set-up of 8 case study trials from the ECMC portfolio, and a survey of our industry contacts to identify common causes of delay.
Commercial contracting, regulatory review, and trial costing were among the six themes identified. These were discussed at a multi-stakeholder workshop in late 2019, where representatives from ECMCs, NHS R&D, industry, regulators, and peer organisations discussed opportunities to improve current processes and expedite UK study set-up.
We have since worked with our Clinical Leads and key stakeholders to scope out and prioritise the most appropriate actions to take forward. One of these next steps includes gathering data from CTU and industry contacts on their experiences of Research Ethics Committees. Further detail on the project findings will also be published in a report later this summer.
If you are interested in learning more, please contact [email protected] |
Operational challenges tackled by the ECMC Centre Business Leads Forum The ECMC Centre Business Leads (CBL) Forum is continuing to tackle the operational challenges the ECMC network is facing due to COVID-19. A CBL steering committee is leading on determining, prioritising and developing operational efficiencies. Members of this committee drafted an action framework to address the three main areas of concern:
Restart of research Monitoring Operational practicalities (social distancing, COVID-19 testing, patient concerns and PPE)
This action framework shows the challenges and solutions at a network level. The CBL Forum will then develop Network-wide best practice proposals. These will help to leverage key ECMC stakeholders (e.g. NIHR, ABPI & CRUK) to highlight, challenge or influence an outcome. The ECMC Programme Office has created an online platform for collaboration. This tool, along with regular meetings of the Forum, supports operational staff from the adult and paediatric network to share challenges and solutions.
If you have any questions, please contact [email protected] |
EC Trial Finder - Connecting back on 15 September EC Trial Finder (ECTF), the Network's trial searching tool that enables quick and easy identification of open early phase oncology trials within the ECMC network is going back online in September.
ECTF was temporarily suspended in March due to COVID-19 and its impact to sites and trial recruitment. We are happy to update that with strong endorsement from the Leads, we are re-opening ECTF on 15 September and look forward to welcoming back the 200+ ECTF users across the network. Staying connected as a network has never been as important and it's wonderful to have ECTF back again to support our shared mission of facilitating patient access to trials, enhancing referrals and driving trial recruitment.
Find out more about ECTF
If you do not yet have an account, get in touch with the ECMC Programme Office's ECTF team: [email protected]
Feel free to directly contact Siru Virtanen, ECTF lead, at anytime with your questions: [email protected] |
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NCRI Virtual Showcase – Submit an abstract 2-3 November 2020 Featuring topical sessions, panel discussions and proffered paper presentations covering the latest discoveries in: Big data and AIPrevention and early detectionImmunology and immunotherapyLiving with and beyond cancerCancer research and COVID-19
There are presentation slots available for all research types falling within these topic areas. Submit an abstract by 13 September 2020 to be considered for these slots.
Submit an abstract |
Sheffield ECMC Bone Oncology Workshop Spring 2021 Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Sheffield ECMC was unable to host their scheduled educational Bone Oncology workshop in June. They are pleased to announce that the workshop will now go ahead in Spring 2021, assuming restrictions on meeting in larger groups are lifted.
Register your interest with Caroline Potts ([email protected]) to be one of the first to know when the new date is confirmed.
Click here for further details about the event
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If you have anything you’d like to feature in a future edition, or if you have feedback on what you’d like to see in the newsletter, please e-mail [email protected] |
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