Research has been designated as one the four pillars in the Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Research at Guy’s and St Thomas’ and our Biomedical Research Centre (BRC) is at the heart of the national effort to develop diagnostics and treatments for COVID-19.
We’re publishing regular infographic updates giving an overview of the COVID-19 research taking place at Guy’s and St Thomas’. The infographics also include a focus on particular areas of activity.
The August 2020 infographic includes a focus on how our BRC’s platforms are supporting COVID-19 studies across the Trust.
- Our Flow Cytometry Platform has processed:
- 62 samples for the COVID-IP study
- 16 samples for the IMMERSE study.
- Our Advanced Therapies Manufactuing Platform starting engineering runs of treatment for
pulmonary fibrosis in COVID-19 patients. - Our Translational Bioinformatics Platform is supporting biomarker identification in COVID-19
patients in a BRC-supported study. - Our Clinical Research Facility is providing clinical and operational infrastructure to the Oxford COVID-19 vaccine study
- Our Biostatistics and Data Management Platform has helped develop the PsoProtect database collecting data on COVID-19 and psoriasis.
The August edition also features key funding awards received by the Trust:
- £8.2m awarded by UKRI and NIHR to PHOSP-COVID consortium including our Trust, looking at long term health impacts of COVID-19.
- £320,000 awarded by our NIHR BRC to eight translational COVID-19 research studies.
- £1,000,000 donated by a philanthropic funder to King’s with our Trust for an immune monitoring programme.
- £320,000 awarded by King’s Together’s Rapid COVID-19 call for 19 projects conducted in partnership with Guy’s and St Thomas’.
The infographic includes our regular updates about overall research performance:
- 22 staff recruited to a dedicated COVID-19 research team
- 17 COVID-19 research studies badged nationally as Urgent Public Health Studies.
- 2,148 participants have been recruited into Urgent Public Health studies.
- 31 other local COVID-19 research studies are underway.
- 3,312 participants have been recruited into other local COVID-19 studies.
- 99 academic publications from COVID-19 studies at the Trust.
You can also find out about highlights from particular studies taking place at the Trust:
- Our research has identified loss of smell and taste as a key symptom of COVID-19, which is now recognised in the World Health Organisation list of symptoms of the disease.
- Over 1,300 patient samples included in the clinical characterisation study ISARIC.
- 379 participants vaccinated in four weeks for the Oxford vaccine study at our NIHR Clinical Research Facility.
- 108 participants recruited to the GenOMICC study looking at how patients’ genes affect their outcomes.
- 60 participants recruited to the paediatric DIAMONDS study, which aims to design new diagnostic tests.
- Our Data Lake has linked 1,520 COVID-19 positive datasets. This information is supporting 15 studies at the Trust.
- 512 participants recruited to our TwinsUK COVID-19 serology study.
