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Author: Louise Stanley

Non-invasive test identifies more than 9 in 10 bladder cancers, clinical study finds

Written by Louise Stanley on . Posted in Cancer outcomes, Early diagnosis and detection.

More than 9 in 10 patients who had bladder cancer were picked up through a non-invasive urine test after urgent referral, a new study has found.

Study of 964 patients across seven NHS urology units found that the test detected 71 of 77 bladder cancers (92.2%) among the nearly 1,000 patients. The study, led by the University of Birmingham and Nonacus Ltd, investigated the real-world significance of testing for bladder cancer using a commercially available urine test –  GALEAS™ Bladder, which tests genomic information from a patient’s urine for traces of bladder cancer.

The peer-reviewed results have been published in European Urology Oncology, and showed significant results for detecting cancer as well as its use as a screening tool.

GALEAS Bladder detected all 17 muscle-invasive bladder cancers (100%) and 35 of 36 high-grade cancers (97.2%) diagnosed during the study. Meanwhile, a negative result was associated with a 99.3% probability of not having bladder cancer.

For the 30% of patients in the study with blood in their urine but which was not visible to the naked eye (non-visible haematuria), GALEAS Bladder identified all bladder cancers (100%) with a negative result associated with a 100% probability of not having bladder cancer.

Professor Richard Bryan, Director of the University of Birmingham’s Bladder Cancer Research Centre and co-author of the study, said: “We have spent many years developing and evaluating the science behind detecting bladder cancer through DNA in urine with support from Cancer Research UK and philanthropists, ultimately leading to the development of the GALEAS Bladder test by Nonacus. This prospective study shows that the very promising early performance has now been reproduced across multiple NHS centres and in a large real-world patient population.

“GALEAS detected 35 of 36 high-grade cancers and every muscle-invasive cancer diagnosed in the study. These results show that molecular urine testing can be used now to help clinicians decide which patients need an urgent cystoscopy and which can safely have that procedure deferred.

“The results are very significant for clinical practice. Only 8% of patients in the study were ultimately diagnosed with bladder cancer, which highlights the challenge facing NHS haematuria services where large numbers of patients currently enter the same urgent diagnostic pathway despite most not having cancer. GALEAS is a promising and less invasive test that can be easier to administer and make testing and screening for bladder cancer far easier.”

The GALEAS test was used in the study alongside a typical way to test for bladder cancer using a technique called cystoscopy. In a cystoscopy test, a camera is passed through the urethra to examine the bladder. The procedure is an important part of bladder cancer diagnosis, but Professor Bryan, a former clinical urologist, notes that the procedure is invasive and resource intensive.

GALEAS Bladder uses DNA found in a urine sample to help clinicians identify patients at greater risk who should be prioritised for urgent cystoscopy, while allowing cystoscopy to be deferred for some patients at lower risk where clinically appropriate.

Lee Silcock, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Nonacus and co-author of the study, said: “Seeing GALEAS perform so strongly across almost 1,000 patients in seven NHS urology departments is extremely encouraging. This is real-world evidence from the patients and pathways the test has been designed to support.”

“What matters most is identifying those most likely to have cancer sooner, while giving clinicians confidence when deciding which patients can safely wait for a cystoscopy. The fact that the test detected every muscle-invasive cancer in the study, alongside a negative predictive value of more than 99%, gives us further confidence in the role GALEAS can play in supporting NHS diagnostic pathways.”

The study also found that incorporating urine-based testing in bladder cancer pathways could reduce the burden on urology departments. At the most cautious pre-specified clinical threshold, using GALEAS Bladder to triage patients was estimated to result in 730 fewer urgent cystoscopies for every 1,000 patients, compared with urgent cystoscopy for everyone, with no loss of net clinical benefit.

GALEAS Bladder is already being used within NHS pathways in England and Wales, with further NHS sites adopting the test as clinical use expands.

Aston University’s health researchers to help guide redesign of Birmingham and Solihull’s NHS

Written by Louise Stanley on . Posted in Birmingham Health Partners, Health inequalities.

Aston University is partnering with fellow BHP members Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust (BCHC)  to build better joined-up health and care services in local neighbourhoods across Birmingham and Solihull.

This new approach aligns with the government’s 10-year health plan to create a Neighbourhood Health Service by moving care out of large hospitals and closer to people’s doorsteps, shifting focus towards preventing illness and moving from analogue systems to more efficient digital technology.

The three-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project will develop England’s first comprehensive system for monitoring how these changes impact patients and staff. It will provide critical metrics on people’s health, their experiences of care, and the well-being of NHS staff, so that continuous improvement can be guided by a detailed understanding of what works well.

To guide this transformational piece of work, health and organisational management researchers across Aston University will work with BCHC to develop a monitoring system to measure outcomes as each service and clinic is redesigned. This will combine qualitative methods, systems mapping and big data.

The system will measure patient experiences of care and help determine whether clinical outcomes are being achieved as services improve – such as reducing the likelihood of falls, preventing acute and critical illness, or better managing chronic conditions. It will also map the efficiency and flow of patients between hospital, community and home so that staff can rapidly intervene in the event of bottlenecks or delays.

For staff, the system will measure wellbeing, caseload and travel burdens as they move into community hubs across the city. These insights will enable the Birmingham and Solihull health and care services to operate an integrated community care system that is more sustainable for staff and can be continuously improved.

As other UK towns and cities look to redesign their health and care services in response to the UK government’s 10-year plan for the NHS, the Birmingham and Solihull model could offer a blueprint for others to learn from.

The KTP project will be led by researchers in Aston University’s Institute for Health and Neurodevelopment, Aston Business School and Aston Pharmacy School. They will bring expertise in developing and deploying data-driven methods for evaluating health services and community care projects, tried and tested through existing partnerships with the NHS.

Professor Rachel Shaw, associate director for researcher development (academic) at the Institute of Health and Neurodevelopment at Aston University, leads the KTP. She said: “Every NHS system is unique to the community it serves. We’re building an evidence-based way to monitor and guide the redesign of a health system that will be fit for the future and reusable for other organisations. Effective evaluation will support staff tasked with running NHS services across Birmingham and Solihull and empower them to continuously improve those services based on evidence. We want to see how staff as well as patients can benefit from care in the community, so that this programme can be a guiding light for other NHS systems across England.”

Dr Robbie Dedi, chief medical officer for BCHC, said: “Making it easier for citizens to access the care and support they need, when and where they need it, is the driving force behind the city’s transformation of health and care services. Our partnership with Aston University will be critical for enabling us to better identify and tackle health inequalities, so we can make services fairer and more accessible for everyone. The new monitoring systems we’re setting up together will guide us in what works, what needs to be improved and whether we’re managing our resources effectively. This will be the first major evaluation of how integrated care functions across Birmingham and Solihull.”

Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, funded by Innovate UK, are collaborative projects that bring together a business, an academic partner, and a qualified associate to deliver strategic innovation and business improvement. Aston University is a national leader in the programme, ranked joint-first in the UK for volume of active projects and first for overall project quality.

For further details about this KTP, visit www.aston.ac.uk/business/collaborate-with-us/knowledge-transfer-partnership/at-work/health-care-system.

Clinical fellowship opportunity – West Midlands Secure Data Environment

Written by Louise Stanley on . Posted in Birmingham Health Partners.

Birmingham Health Partners, in partnership with the West Midlands Secure Data Environment (WMSDE) and the Dexter platform team, is pleased to invite expressions of interest from clinicians in maternity and acute care to join our collaborative research and data innovation program.

About WMSDE and Dexter

WMSDE is an NHS platform that enables secure access to linked health and care data to approved users for research. WMSDE works in partnership with health and care organisations within the region to bring together disparate health information into linked multi-modal datasets for technology evaluation, clinical trials, translational studies, and real-world assessment of treatments and healthcare delivery systems. WMSDE is working in collaboration with Dexter, a clinical data enablement platform designed to extract, normalise and prepare health data into analysis-ready datasets. This significantly reduces the time required for data analysis and improves the accessibility of health and care data available for research to improve patient care.

The opportunity

We are seeking clinicians from maternity and acute care backgrounds with an interest in health informatics and real-world evidence to dedicate one day per week (0.2 FTE) to support the evaluation of the Dexter tool within the WMSDE health data environment. This role offers a unique opportunity to use new datasets and advanced automated data extraction to undertake research that improve patient care, while evaluating and improving the underlying technology.

Key responsibilities

Clinical guidance: provide expert clinical input for the development and validation of clinical phenotypes within the Dexter platform.

Research collaboration: develop and deliver high-priority research projects using the using DEXTER on the above datasets, supported by technical and academic colleagues in BHP.

Engagement: act as a bridge between frontline clinical needs and technical data engineering teams to ensure research outputs are clinically relevant and actionable.

Training and communication: contribute to the development of a clinical and academic community engaged in approved use of data to improve patient care.

Who should apply?

We welcome interest from senior healthcare professionals in maternity and acute care backgrounds (including but not limited to: consultants, specialty registrars, senior midwives, pharmacists, AHPs, healthcare scientists, clinical academics) who:

  • Have a strong interest in either medical informatics, data-driven research or quality improvement.
  • Possess a working knowledge of, or wish to be trained on, the development of clinical phenotypes using structured data (e.g., SNOMED CT, ICD-10, OPCS DM&D), and observational research
  • Can secure the support of their department for a 1-day-per-week commitment.

Why join us?

The collaboration places you at the heart of one of the UK’s leading Secure Data Environments and health partnerships. You will work alongside a multidisciplinary team of data scientists and researchers, gaining invaluable experience in automated health data research.

How to apply

Interested candidates should submit a short statement of interest (max 500 words) and a CV outlining:

  • Your clinical background and area of expertise
  • Your experience or interest in health data science and proposal of the broad areas of interest you would want to focus on
  • Confirmation of departmental support for the time commitment

Deadline for submission: Thursday 6 August 2026.

Contact for enquiries and applications: Cassie Conway

Healthcare professionals invited to apply for new regional research programme

Written by Louise Stanley on . Posted in Birmingham Health Partners.

Following the launch of the West Midlands Regional Account for Clinical Researchers (WMRACR), we’re pleased to announce that the programme is now accepting applications from doctors, nurses, dentists, midwives, therapists and pharmacists.

WMRACR is a partnership led by the University of Birmingham and funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC), working with Aston, Keele and Warwick universities to increase the number of clinical academics across the region.

These awards are designed to support talented postdoctoral clinical professionals and other healthcare staff to develop competitive research careers. Support includes:

  • Protected research time for ~12 months, delivered within your current role; typically at 50% time.
  • Mentorship and tailored training
  • Opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration
  • Access to a strong regional research network

Applicants must be based within a West Midlands NHS Trust or University.

Application details
Further details, including eligibility and application guidance, are available on the WMRACR website.

The deadline for the first cohort is Friday September 11th. 

The WMRACR programme team will be hosting a series of webinars to answer any queries you may have on this. To register for one of these please contact the University of Birmingham ICAT team on icat@contacts.bham.ac.uk 

  • Wednesday 8th July 12:00-12:30
  • Wednesday 15th July 14:00-14:30
  • Tuesday 21st July 09:30-10:00

Drug to delay Type 1 Diabetes approved by NICE

Written by Louise Stanley on . Posted in Birmingham Health Partners, Early diagnosis and detection, Experimental medicine.

Diabetes experts from across Birmingham Health Partners have welcomed the approval of teplizumab for use on the NHS, following an announcement by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE).

The immunotherapy drug can delay the progression to symptomatic type 1 diabetes in people who are in stage 2 of the condition, and will now be available through the NHS for children over 8 years and adults with Stage 2 Type 1 Diabetes.

The NICE announcement follows work by academics and clinicians to improve the support available for children and young people who go onto develop type 1 diabetes. At BHP – via founding members the University of Birmingham, Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospitals and University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trusts – research is ongoing through a screening programme which can help to identify young people at risk of the condition.

The ELSA (EarLy Surveillance for Autoimmune diabetes) study, led by Professor Parth Narendran, has seen thousands of young people screened for antibodies that act as markers for whether type 1 diabetes will develop later in life.

Today’s announcement recognises the crucial role that screening programmes, including ELSA, will have for identifying young people who will benefit from Teplizumab.

ELSA has also enabled patients to have early access to Teplizumab, with the first young person in the UK, 14-year-old Sam from Kings Norton, receiving the drug at Birmingham Children’s Hospital under the care of Dr Renuka Dias and her specialist team at the Clinical Research Facility. Now, with the approval for funded use on the NHS it is estimated that around 1,100 people could be eligible for teplizumab in the first year-based data provided from the ELSA study.

Parth Narendran, Professor of Diabetes Medicine at the University of Birmingham said: “Today’s NICE recommendation for teplizumab marks a significant milestone in the UK for people at the very earliest stages of type 1 diabetes.

“As the first disease-modifying therapy shown to delay progression to clinical, insulin-requiring type 1 diabetes, teplizumab has the potential to transform the treatment paradigm from reacting to disease onset to intervening earlier in the disease process. This means that patients identified early, for example through the ELSA study led by the University of Birmingham, will have benefit from treatment that can give valuable additional years free from the daily burden of managing type 1 diabetes.

“This decision will go a long way to help the development of screening, monitoring and prevention pathways that will underpin the future of type 1 diabetes care.”

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition that causes the body to attack and destroy insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. Without insulin, blood glucose levels rise dangerously, and, without treatment, death. Diagnosis often comes suddenly and in crisis – one in four children in the UK are diagnosed in diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a life-threatening emergency caused by extremely high blood glucose levels and requires emergency treatment in hospital.

Teplizumab targets the immune system’s attack on insulin-producing beta cells in the pancreas. By modulating the immune response, it can delay the onset of clinical type 1 diabetes in people who are in stage 2.

Clinical trials have shown that a single course of teplizumab, which is administered in hospital daily for 14 days, can halve the progression rates to symptomatic type 1 diabetes.

Following today’s announcement, NHS will need to develop new testing and treatment pathways to make teplizumab available in practice.

Work is already under way to help build this infrastructure. The ELSA study, which is  co-funded by Diabetes UK and Breakthrough T1D, demonstrated what childhood screening for type 1 diabetes might look like in the real world.

A second phase, ELSA 2, was launched with £1.5 million in funding and has expanded screening to all children aged 2 to 17 across the UK and aiming to recruit a further 30,000 children.

ELSA 2 will also establish new NHS Early-Stage Type 1 Diabetes Clinics, providing families with clinical and psychological support and creating a clear pathway from screening through to diagnosis, monitoring and treatment.

Dr Renuka Dias, a Consultant Paediatric Endocrinologist working at Birmingham Women and Children’s Hospital and is an Honorary Associate Clinical Professor at the University of Birmingham and the Lead Paediatrician for the ELSA study.

Dr Dias said: “The approval of teplizumab by NICE offers people with early-stage Type 1 Diabetes to delay the need for insulin potentially for several years and represents a genuine step-change in how we think about the management of this relentless condition and hope that in time we can move closer to managing Type 1 diabetes without insulin as the first-line therapy.”

The announcement that teplizumab will be available on the NHS will give young people and adults more time to prepare for living with type 1 diabetes, with trial data suggesting that the drug can delay the onset of symptomatic diabetes by an average of 2.5 years.

As well as teplizumab, academics at the University of Birmingham are researching other ways to preserve the cells that produce insulin in the pancreas, and which are lost in type 1 diabetes.

Colin Dayan, Professor of Clinical Diabetes and Metabolism is collaborating with colleagues across the UK in the Type 1 Diabetes Immunotherapy Consortium to conduct clinical trials in adults and children with new-onset type 1 diabetes and develop new approaches to beta cell preservation and ultimately aim to find ways to manage type 1 diabetes without the need for insulin dependency.

Professor Dayan said: “This is such an exciting moment – it is the first step towards treating type 1 diabetes without insulin. Teplizumab delays the need for insulin by more than 2 years. Many other drugs have also shown promise in slowing the damage to insulin making cells by the immune system. As we pick up more cases early by screening and combine treatments to retain the body’s insulin making cells for longer and longer, we can foresee the day that insulin treatment in children becomes a thing of the past.”

BHP part of new regional programme to support early career researchers

Written by Louise Stanley on . Posted in Birmingham Health Partners.

The University of Birmingham is leading a new partnership which aims to strengthen support for early career clinical researchers, thanks to major funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC), helping build research capacity across the region and beyond.

The MRC has announced funding for the establishment of 10 Regional Accounts for Clinical Researchers (RACR), working with NHS organisations to benefit approximately 200 clinicians across the UK. The investment brings together more than 50 research organisations and over 60 NHS organisations across the UK.

The University – a founding member of BHP – will host the West Midlands Regional Account for Clinical Researchers (WMRACR), a partnership programme in collaboration with fellow BHP member Aston University, and the universities of Warwick and Keele, aimed at increasing the number of clinical academics in the region. As Birmingham’s strategic research partnership, BHP is one of three  academic-NHS alliances within the WMRACR.

Clinicians (including doctors, nurses, dentists, midwives, therapists and pharmacists) play a vital role in delivering patient care and identifying the most pressing challenges faced by health services. Despite serving around 12% of the UK population, the West Midlands currently has only 6.8% of the national clinical academic workforce. WMRACR aims to address this imbalance through a coordinated, region-wide approach that strengthens opportunities for aspiring clinical academics.

The WMRACR combines expertise in discovery science, primary care, real-world research and widening participation and will create a shared framework for collaboration, enabling joint supervision, access to specialist facilities, and opportunities to work across institutions.

The WMRACR will focus on key career transition points for clinical academics, particularly the move from PhD to independence and returning to research after time in clinical roles or career breaks. Researchers will benefit from tailored support and structured fellowship development through the University of Birmingham Fellowship Academy.

Professor Lorraine Harper, Professor of Nephrology at the University of Birmingham and Birmingham Health Partners Managing Director, said: “By bringing together universities, NHS organisations and regional partners, WMRACR will provide coordinated support for talented clinicians at critical stages of their research careers, helping to accelerate innovation and improve patient care across the region.”

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