Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit celebrates its 21st anniversary

Across the world there are dozens of metaphors, proverbs and quotes outlining the importance of teamwork. A particularly memorable one came from the author and activist Helen Keller: ‘Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much’. This is particularly true of the medical industry.

The treatment that you take, whether it is a medicine, device, therapy or surgery, has been years in the making. The healthcare professional administering it to you is the last in a long chain that starts with a clinical problem and an initial idea for a treatment. A pivotal part of this chain is a randomised controlled trial, with support from a clinical trials unit.

Established in 1997 by Professor Richard Gray, the BCTU’s current Director is Professor Peter Brocklehurst, who joined the University from University College London to take on this role in July 2016.

In order to understand the pivotal work that the BCTU undertakes it is important to understand what a clinical trial is and what its purpose is.

"If we develop a new drug or a new way of doing something, for example a new surgical technique, we want to be certain that this is better than what we currently do," reveals Professor Brocklehurst. "In order to do this we have to carry out a clinical trial. This allows us to compare the new treatment with the existing one to see whether it is better or not."

Clinical trials are divided into different stages, called phases. As Cancer Research UK explains, the earliest phase trials may look at whether a drug is safe or the side effects it causes. A later phase trial aims to test whether a new treatment is better than existing treatments.

The BCTU’s main focus is on large scale late phase randomised controlled trials.

"You can’t just give a new drug to a group of people and say, 'They’ve done better than the people on the previous treatment' because there may be differences between those two groups of people," explains Professor Brocklehurst.

"In a trial we randomise participants to receive the new therapy or the existing therapy, which is a fair way of testing the effect of the new treatment. It’s a bit like the flip of a coin but in a much more sophisticated manner using specific software. We do this so people don’t know whether they are going to get the new therapy or not.

"That way we can ensure that the two groups of people, those who get the new treatment and those who don’t, are as similar as they possibly can be. For example, there is no opportunity that one group is older or more likely to be female or have more severe disease than the other group because they’ve been allocated at random."

With 21 successful years and hundreds of completed trials under its belt, the BCTU is growing from strength to strength, providing the scientific, technical and computing expertise needed to support clinical trial research from conception through to completion.

Here's to the next 21 years!