THE USE OF HUMAN BLOOD FOR DRUG DISCOVERY RESEARCH
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The use of human blood for drug discovery research at Medicines Discovery Catapult
IRAS ID
289636
Contact name
Emily Offer
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Medicines Discovery Catapult
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
N/A, N/A
Duration of Study in the UK
4 years, 11 months, 30 days
Research summary
Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) is a non-for-profit organisation based in Cheshire, England, with the aim to support the drug development industry to overcome challenges in novel medicine research, to accelerate drug discovery. Some of these activities include working with collaborators and clients to understand the mechanism of action of their drug molecules, the drugs’ functional activity and supporting the clinical positioning and application of the novel medicine. In addition, our research includes biomarker analysis with the aim to help define a patient population and clinical response.
The individual patient response to drugs is often dependent on patient disease phenotype, specific biomarkers of disease and disease status. As a result, for some drug targets, modelling this using primary human cellular response is a good way to understand the functional characteristics of a response of a drug target. Therefore MDC is proposing to isolate primary cells from anonymised human blood, serum or tissue. Samples will be taken from healthy volunteers or patient populations and used for mechanistic, functional, biomarker and potentially toxicity assays.
REC name
East of England - Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EE/0302
Date of REC Opinion
7 Jan 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion