NIHR | Manchester Biomedical Research Centre

Manchester BRC’s response to COVID-19

NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) was at the heart of the Greater Manchester (GM) COVID-19 response, ensuring a coordinated approach to the city-wide research response, supporting NIHR Urgent Public Health (UPH) research studies, providing resource to underpin the research and innovation infrastructure, and funding COVID-19 research.

In an unprecedented move, GM academics, scientists and clinicians, echoing the partnership structure of BRCs, formed the Research Rapid Response Group (R3G) to find ways to beat COVID-19 and save lives. Chaired by Manchester BRC Director Professor Ian Bruce, R3G explicitly aimed to minimise lives lost and minimise the impact of this crisis on the local health and care system and GM citizens. R3G brought together researchers and clinical colleagues from The University of Manchester (UoM) and Manchester BRC’s three partner NHS Trusts, supported by the GM NIHR and R&I infrastructure. R3G has been pivotal in GM’s approach and success in the region’s response to COVID-19, which has contributed to the overall global understanding of COVID-19 and developing diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. R3G also peer-reviewed studies funded by Manchester BRC through the repurposing of BRC non-pay budget to priority COVID-19 studies.

The expertise, experience, and leadership of our clinical researchers was critical to both the care and development of treatments for patients with COVID-19.

  • Manchester BRC staff were redeployed to support study coordination and operational support for clinical trials and observational studies.
  • Across Manchester BRC’s partner trusts, nearly 11,000 participants were recruited to UPH COVID-19 studies (to March 2021).
  • Several BRC researchers also had significant roles in leading UPH and other high-profile studies, including; CONDOR/FALCON (Prof Rick Body – Chief Investigator), the CIRCO Immunology Consortium (see top achievement), COVID-RT Lung, ACCORD, PHOSP-COVID, ESCAPE and RECOVERY.
  • The Hearing Health theme drove novel research into the unintended consequences of wearing face-masks and the effects of COVID-19 on hearing loss and tinnitus.
  • Our laboratory and technical staff (Cancer Precision Medicine theme) played a pivotal role in establishing the Lighthouse Laboratory at Alderley Park as a national Pillar 2 diagnostics service.

Dr Tim Felton, Senior Lecturer and Consultant in Intensive Care and Respiratory Medicine, Clinical lead for COVID-19 research at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) and a key BRC Respiratory theme researcher, played a central role in the RECOVERY trial and co-authored the seminal paper on dexamethasone (New England Journal of Medicine). He was also the Primary Investigator on several UPH studies at MFT, including the Janssen Phase 3 COVID-19 vaccine study. Dr Alex Horsley (Respiratory theme) and Dr Ben Parker (MSK theme) co-authored the results paper of the Public Health England (PHE) ESCAPE-COVID study, demonstrating that robust cellular immunity persists after primary infection, in people who experienced either mild/moderate or asymptomatic COVID-19.

Manchester BRC showed great flexibility and agility to pivot and respond rapidly to the overall GM COVID effort. We accelerated crucial work programmes including the Greater Manchester Care Record and enhance existing partner relationships within the GM R&I infrastructure, which not only enabled GM to emerge as a leading region in COVID-19 research, but also ensures that current and future patients will benefit from cutting-edge, personalised care.