Recently Layla Moran, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon and Chair of the Health and Social Care Select Committee visited the Oxford Health Clinical Research Facility (OH CRF).
The MP and her team were onsite at Warneford Hospital discussing plans for the Warneford Park Development, an ambitious development project for the site which intends to provide a new, fit-for-purpose mental health hospital surrounded by a research and innovation hub. The hub will aim to tackle some of the most important issues in brain health by discovering new drug therapies, and new forms of treatment for patients. The OH CRF will be a key component of Warneford Park’s future success.
OH CRF Clinical Lead Dr Katharine Smith and OH CRF Director Prof Andrea Cipriani welcomed Layla Moran for the tour, where Ms Moran had an opportunity to view the facilities and chat to staff and study participants.
During the tour, she met with specialist staff in clinic appointments, viewed the sleep study suite and discussed new OH CRF studies. The tour presented a great opportunity to showcase the newly refurbished CRF lab which expands capacity for the CRF team to process blood, saliva and cerebrospinal fluid samples from research study participants.
OH CRF, which opened in 2011 to deliver commercial and non-commercial early phase experimental clinical research hosted the Astra Zeneca vaccine trial and later ran the Novavax vaccine trial during the Covid-19 pandemic, seeing over 500 participants.
Commenting on her recent visit, Layla Moran told us: “It was a privilege to meet the team at the Warneford Hospital to hear about the latest studies and learn about the very latest work being done to find new treatments. High quality, specialist mental health care is critically important and too often neglected. I was pleased to hear about the success of the Community Mental health Hubs but it is also clear that we need capital investment into our research facilities and clinical settings to deliver the very best care that patients deserve.”
Professor Andrea Cipriani said: “In 2022, we were awarded over £4 million by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Out of 28 CRFs funded in the whole country, only three received more funding than the previous 5-year cycle, and the OH-CRF was one of them. We are the only CRF in the UK entirely dedicated to delivering studies in mental health and cognition, we are completely aligned with the Mental Health Mission and at the heart of the development of the new Warneford Park. This is a huge responsibility towards patients, carers and clinicians, but also taxpayers and policy makers. It was for us a fantastic opportunity to meet our local MP and start a discussion about how we can contribute even more to the advancement of mental healthcare, nationally and globally.”
Dr Katharine Smith said: ‘It was great to be able to host the visit to the OH-CRF to show our current facilities and vision for future developments. We continue to expand our portfolio of clinical research studies with novel treatments for mental and cognitive disorders including psychedelics, repurposing already licensed drugs such as semaglutide and pramipexole and investigating new potential disease modifying treatments for Alzheimer’s dementia. Participants are at the heart of what we do and we work closely with our participant group ENGAGE to develop our studies. It was fantastic that Layla could meet some of our research participants and members of the ENGAGE group to hear about their experiences’
To contact OH CRF please email: oxfordhealth.CRF@nhs.net
To contact the Warneford Park project team, please email: WarnefordPark@oxfordhealth.nhs.uk