May 21st 2013

International Clinical Trials Day commemorates the anniversary of the very first clinical trial by James Lind.  James Lind started his famous controlled trial comparing different treatments for scurvy on the 20th May 1747 (see Lind 1753).

This is also a day to celebrate the enormous contribution clinical research professionals and trial participants make towards successful delivery of clinical trials and improving the health of the population.

17th May 2013

Seven members of CTRU staff are attending the 34th Annual International meeting of The Society for Clinical Trials in Boston, USA to give oral & poster presentations.  Topics include the experience of establishing an early phase trials unit and methodological issues relating to minimisation techniques and central endpoint review.  The CTRU is represented by both statisticians and trial & data managers: Sarah Brown, Dena Cohen, Colin Everett, Lucy McParland, Louise Flanagan, Julie Croft & Howard Collier.
 
For more information, please visit http://www.sctweb.org/public/meetings/2013/home.cfm

15th May 2013

CTRU is pleased to announce we now have 21 centres across 10 countries recruiting into our international surgical trial, ROLARR. Over 170 patients have been recruited to date, and we are rapidly approaching the half way milestone of 200 patients.

ROLARR is a pivotal international multi-centre, prospective, pragmatic, randomised-controlled, parallel-group trial of robotic assisted versus laparoscopic surgery for the curative treatment of rectal cancer. ROLARR is currently open to recruitment in the UK, United States, Italy, Denmark, France, Germany, Finland, Australia, Singapore and South Korea.

For more information about the ROLARR trial, please click here.

15th May 2013

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has renewed its funding of £5.25m for the Yorkshire and Humber Research Design Service (RDSYH) for a further five years. NIHR RDS are part of the NIHR Programmes and aim to deliver a high quality, responsive service that supports researchers to develop and submit high quality applications to NIHR and other national peer-reviewed funding programmes. RDSYH is a White Rose academic collaboration. The White Rose University Consortium is a strategic partnership between three world class Yorkshire universities at Sheffield, Leeds and York. The funding will allow the NIHR RDSYH set up in 2008 to continue to deliver high quality support for research proposals for applied health and social care. For West Yorkshire this service is provided by Leeds Institute of Clinical Trials Research and the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences.

7th May 2013

Professor Anne Forster (LIHS - AUECR) and Professor Amanda Farrin (CTRU) led the 1st Leeds Colloquium on Stroke Rehabilitation Research, chaired by Professor Allan House (LIHS), at the University of Leeds on April 17th. The event was attended by senior researchers, statisticians, health economists and funders in the field of stroke rehabilitation from across the UK.