Niche recognised in a major Medical Research Council-funded research programme into treatment of severe asthma

The full-service, multidisciplinary CRO, Niche Science & Technology Ltd., is part of a successful consortium announced yesterday by George Freeman, UK Under Secretary of State for Life Science, to have won a major MRC grant. The consortium of industry, health providers and academia has been awarded a £4.8 million investment in their innovative new research programme that aims to transform the way severe asthma is diagnosed and managed and to pave the way for the development of new treatments. Being driven by leading clinical and academic experts from the UK, the United Kingdom Refractory Asthma Stratification Programme (RASP-UK) is a partnership between the MRC, Asthma UK and a group of pharmaceutical companies, who are also contributing £4.8 million to the programme.  The initiative is being led by Professor Liam Heaney of Queen’s University Belfast.

The objective of the programme is to change the way severe asthma is managed in the clinic and to deliver a more personalised treatment approach to individual patients. It is generally accepted that the current ‘one size fits all’ approach to asthma treatment, which incrementally increases the amount of therapy even though patients continue not to respond, is failing patients with severe asthma. Half the burden of asthma on healthcare resources is incurred by these 20% of patients with severe disease who remain poorly controlled despite use of all currently available therapies.

Niche is playing a critical role in the consortium administration and management of the programmes clinical studies. The programme will investigate novel strategies to deliver available treatments, which will be better tailored to individual needs of patients. Importantly, it will also investigate why some patients fail to respond to current treatments, in order to identify potential new drug treatments.

Dr Tim Hardman, Managing Director of Niche Science and Technology Ltd. said today ‘ This is a very exciting research programme and Niche is delighted to be asked to take part.’

The award is part of a £13.7 million investment in stratified medicine collaborations funded by the MRC that was announced by the UK Minister for Life Sciences, George Freeman. Speaking at the London Stock Exchange this morning (Thursday 29th January), George Freeman said: “The UK is a world-leader in the life sciences and the sector is central to economic growth. Since the launch of our UK Strategy for Life Sciences in 2011 the industry has agreed over £3.5 billion of investment in the UK, which is expected to create over 11,000 jobs”.

Professor Sir John Savill, the MRC’s chief executive, said: “The goal of stratified medicine is to provide patients with the best treatments by ensuring that existing medicines are targeted at those who will derive most benefit but also by accelerating the development of new therapies. Achieving this goal requires partnerships that harness the diverse mix of knowledge, expertise and commitment of academia, industry and patients. Here in the UK, we’re ideally placed to be at the forefront of this field because we can combine excellence in research with access to some of the highest quality clinical resources and data in the world. This is attracting small, medium and large companies from across the UK and internationally to partner with us. The consortia we are supporting are keen to work with new partners and we shall be considering further disease areas that might benefit from this approach.”

For more details on the programme and the consortium please visit www.rasp.org.uk