In a first for Europe, the University of Birmingham is working with University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust (UHB) and BioNTech to recruit patients to an mRNA vaccine trial for pancreatic cancer.
The trial is ambitious, tackling one of the toughest cancers by deploying an emerging technique that primes the patient’s immune system to fight back. Birmingham is one of Europe’s leading hubs for cancer research and clinical trials, and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Trust treats the UK’s highest number of pancreatic cancers. In other centres, people could be waiting two or three months, but in Birmingham we’re operating on a patient and recruiting them to a trial in a matter of days.
It illustrates the opportunity for life sciences in Birmingham. The mRNA vaccine trial requires shipping to Germany. To speed up future initiatives we have secured funding for 400m2 ‘near-patient biomanufacturing’ facilities, known as cleanrooms, in the PHTA, adjacent to the Government’s Advanced Therapy Treatment Centre for the Midlands and Wales at UHB and the university campus. In short order, we can now stop the loss of SMEs to mainland Europe for Advanced Therapy manufacturing and get treatments to patients sooner.
