Announcement
Based on experiences and approaches from across the ECMC network the Centre Business Leads worked collaboratively to produce guidance on what to consider when reviewing and making improvements to local restart frameworks to set up, open and recruit to trials during national emergencies. This document can be used by members of the network to help implement or improve restart prioritisation categorisation of trials.
At the beginning of 2020, the COVID-19 Pandemic resulted in restrictions which made on-site monitoring of clinical trial data and documents more challenging due to safety and social distancing restrictions. These restrictions meant alternative ways of monitoring clinical trials needed to be explored and implemented to ensure data integrity and patient safety on clinical trials.
ECMC Quinquennial Review 12-month delay
The ECMC Network quinquennial review process has been delayed for 12-months, due to the impact of the pandemic on the ECMC Network sites.
The current 5- year ECMC funding period (2017 – 2022) is due to end in March 2022. A quinquennial review process was scheduled to run between March and October this year to award funding for the 4th ECMC quinquennium (2022 – 2027). However, all sites in the network have been seriously impacted by the current wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Read recent updates from the Advanced & Cell Therapies team led by Professor Fiona Thistlethwaite and about the recent appointment of Dr Emma Searle to the Haematology team within the Manchester ECMC
Read about the ACCEPT (a phase Ib/II) and ProCAID (placebo controlled randomised phase II) trials taking place at Southampton ECMC
Biospecific antibodies are showing promising activity in early phase trials in relapsed/refractory Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), including patients that have received prior CAR-T therapies.
Two trials from the Trials Acceleration Programme (TAP) will be opening across the UK - VICTOR and PROMise
Researchers in the University of Sheffield Department of Oncology and Metabolism have formed a new university spinout company (Modulus Oncology) with experienced drug development entrepreneurs Dr Clare Wareing and Dr Alan Wise from Edinburgh-based bioincubator company Cumulus Oncology.
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory (CSHL) have completed an early phase clinical trial of a drug called plerixafor showing that it induces an integrated immune response in the tumours of patients with cancer types that do not usually respond to immunotherapy.
The teams from ECMC North delivered successfully their first on-line educational event on October 19th 2020. We have now moved to developing the content for the ECMC COVID-19 Community Hub, a curated on-line platform to build on the learnings from the workshops held in October.