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Impact: Health and wellbeing; commerce; studies and clinical trials of the effects of progesterone receptor modulators (PRMs) underpinned their application for the benefit of women of childbearing age.
Significance: UoE studies underpinned the application of PRMs as emergency contraception including over-the-counter availability and the treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB); changed clinical guidelines; influenced Pharma R&D.
Beneficiaries: Women of reproductive age; the NHS and healthcare delivery organisations; pharmaceutical companies.
Attribution: Studies were conducted by Critchley, Baird and colleagues (UoE).
Reach: Worldwide; annually 4M women seek emergency contraception in the USA, and in the UK 1M women seek help for HMB. Drugs targeting the PR are licenced in 67 countries. Multiple global Pharma are active in the field of PRM biology.
Impact: Health and welfare; policy in the form of national and international guidelines; diagnostic service; engagement with patient groups.
Significance: UoE-formulated diagnostic criteria adopted by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), enable reliable case ascertainment and longitudinal study of disease trends. The UoE Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease Unit acts as an international reference centre for diagnosis. Case ascertainment has improved.
Beneficiaries: Patients with prion disease and their families, policy-makers, the NHS, charities.
Attribution: The UoE CJD Unit led the work with international collaborators.
Reach: Worldwide; diagnostic criteria are WHO-endorsed and have been adopted worldwide. Pooling of data across Europe has enabled assessment of 11,000 cases of sporadic CJD.
Impact: Health and welfare; policy; the environment; fundamental changes to phthalate use, wider EU and US Endocrine Disrupting Chemical (EDC) regulations and chemical bans.
Significance: Shaped policy, regulation and the potential causal relationship of environmental EDC on male reproductive disorders and testicular dysgenesis syndrome.
Beneficiaries: Governments; chemical and food regulatory agencies; healthcare workers advising and treating pregnant women; pregnant women and their fetuses; males with disorders of sex development; adult males; plastics manufacturers.
Attribution: EDC research was developed and shaped by Prof Richard Sharpe and colleagues at UoE.
Reach: International; Europe, North America.
Impact: Changed public health policy by quantifying the level of asymptomatic vCJD infection in the population and the mechanism of its transmission, and by identifying cases of human-human transmission of vCJD via blood products.
Significance: UoE work informed the public and policy-makers of the risk of vCJD transmission, which resulted in policy changes and the implementation of precautions to prevent vCJD transmission and to limit the chance of a self-sustaining blood- or tissue-contamination-related secondary epidemic.
Beneficiaries: Patients, the NHS and healthcare delivery organisations, government, policy-makers.
Attribution: The work was carried out at UoE in the National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Research and Surveillance Unit (NCJDRSU) and the Roslin Institute UoE (Roslin) with UK collaborators.
Reach: International, particularly UK and North America.
University of Glasgow research has led to the adoption of first-line chemotherapy for ovarian cancer, which has improved patient survival by 11% and has been used to treat 66% of women with ovarian cancer since January 2011 in the West of Scotland Cancer Care Network alone. These therapies are recommended by guidelines for ovarian cancer treatment in the USA, Europe and the UK. The USA guidelines are disseminated to 4.3 million people worldwide and the European guidelines reach 15,000 health professionals. The UK guidelines are used to identify those drugs that are funded by the NHS and used in NHS hospitals.
A research team, led by Professor John Robertson, was joined by Professor Herb Sewell as lead collaborator. They developed a blood test that permitted early detection of lung cancer in high risk patients, allowing earlier and more successful treatment. The EarlyCDT-Lung test was commercialised by the university spin-out, Oncimmune, and launched in 2010. It is in clinical use in North and South America, in private clinics in the UK and in some Middle East countries, generating employment and revenues for the company, and is starting to bring mortality and lifestyle benefits to patients and their families.
Southampton research underpins the clinical development of a new class of anti-cancer monoclonal antibodies (mAb), such as anti-CD40, anti-CD27 and anti-CD20. The most advanced is a next generation, fully human drug, ofatumumab (commercialised by GlaxoSmithKline/Genmab; trade-name Arzerra) approved in Oct 2009 to treat advanced chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. Its approval was based on a 42% response rate in patients who had failed current `best in class' treatment. Arzerra is now a multi-million dollar drug, launched in 26 countries (and growing) and is being used in 19 on-going clinical trials worldwide for diseases ranging from lymphoma to rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Southampton's work has inspired follow-on funding from government and industry in excess of £12m.
Around 72 million people worldwide have problems conceiving a child. Research at Cardiff University has led to the development of a suite of self-help tools that help individuals and healthcare professionals to manage the problems that infertility brings. The FertiSTAT tool provides individually tailored fertility guidance and has played a central role in fertility awareness campaigns in Europe and beyond. FertiQoL, a measure of fertility-related quality of life, is used in clinical trials and by clinicians to assess how infertility affects patients' quality of life. Finally, the PRCI tool is used in clinics to help women cope with the stresses involved in fertility treatment.
Cancer is a widespread deadly disease; annually, one million new breast cancers are diagnosed globally. Endometriosis is a poorly understood disorder, with 80 million patients worldwide. Current therapies for both are inadequate and discovery of new drugs is critical. The Bath group has pioneered identification of new targets and designed two "first-in-class" clinical drugs. The Bath/Imperial College spin-out company Sterix (subsequently acquired by a major pharmaceutical company) has translated them into patients and to the pharmaceutical industry. The steroid sulfatase inhibitors, Irosustat and J995 have entered eighteen clinical trials worldwide in patients with these hormone-dependent diseases, with several ongoing since 2008. Disease was stabilised for cancer patients; the advanced clinical evaluation of both drugs is in progress.
Researchers at the University of Leeds have designed and developed new approaches and technologies for cancer patients to self-assess their symptoms and quality of life. The work focused on electronic methods for collecting patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), developing PROMs for neglected areas of patient care, and running trials of these techniques. These approaches produced sizeable patient benefits including improved symptom control and better quality-of-life. These findings have influenced clinical guidelines in the UK and Canada, NHS policy and the endorsement of PROMs in the Health and Social Care Act (2012). Electronic PROMs systems based on the Leeds research have been implemented locally, nationally and internationally, making measurable improvements to patient welfare and health, such as a reported significant increase in completion of chemotherapy treatment.