Clinical trials centre
The clinical trials centre at St Mary's Hospital was established in 1991 and is one of the leading HIV research units in the UK. It is located on the ground floor of the Winston Churchill wing, opposite the Jefferiss wing. The centre is open Monday to Friday from 09.00 to 17.00.
What are clinical trials?
Clinical trials are carried out to assess the safety and effectiveness of new drugs and to find the best way to use drugs that are already available. There are four stages of trials in people. The stages start with small trials in healthy volunteers and move to large studies involving thousands of patients around the world.
Who can take part in our clinical trials?
Patients from the Jefferiss wing and Wharfside clinic can take part in our clinical trials. We also carry out some studies in healthy volunteers who are not patients of the clinic.
How can I apply to take part in a trial?
You can find details of our current clinical trials below. If you are interested in taking part in any of the studies listed below, please contact one of the team or visit the clinical trials centre at St Mary's Hospital.
The team currently working at the centre are:
- Dr Alan Winston, senior lecturer
Telephone: 020 3312 1603 - Dr Sarah Fidler, senior lecturer
Telephone: 020 3312 6738 - Dr Jaime Vera clinical research fellow
Telephone 020 3312 6738 - Ken Legg, research manager
Telephone: 020 3312 1464 - Scott Mullaney, research nurse
Telephone: 020 3312 6499 - Siobhan McKenna, research nurse
Telephone: 020 3312 1466 - Kristin Kuldanek, research nurse
Telephone: 020 3312 6047 - Ngaire Latch, research nurse
Telephone: 020 3312 6047 - Ling Jun Chen research nurse
Telephone 020 3312 6047
Current clinical trials
Currently we are working on a range of different trials which means that there may be something you are able to take part in.
HIV antiretroviral drug trials
New drugs to treat HIV continue to be developed as scientists find drugs that work in a similar way to existing drugs but that may have less side effects, be more effective at controlling the virus or that work even if the existing drugs can no longer contol the virus
Antiretroviral drugs work by blocking HIV at different stages of its infectious life cycle. You have probably heard names such as protease inhibitors, reverse transcriptase inhibitors, fusion inhibitors and integrase inhibitors. Scientists continue to try to find new points of this cycle to block and the next group of drugs to be tested are known as maturation inhibitors and hope to have trials of these drugs at some point in the future.
We are currently conducting clinical trials that:
- Compare new drugs against the existing ones
- Use lower doses of current drugs against the existing ones to see if it reduces the side-effects
- Compare different combinations of drugs with each other
There are also trials that test treatment strategies of:
- when is the best time to start taking antiretroviral
- once stable on treatment can you reduce the number of drugs you take
We also carry out pharmacokinetic studies that look very closely at the levels of the drugs over a 24 hour period often to see if taking other medication affects the amount of the drug in your blood.
We also have several clinical trials that look at how the virus and treatment can affect your brain and your memory (cognitive function) and these trials include brain scans, computerised tests and sometimes lumbar punctures.
We also have trials that are looking couples where one partner is HIV positive and the other negative.
Healthy volunteer trials
We currently have trials for HIV negative healthy volunteers.
These are pharmacokinetic trials looking at the interactions of drugs to treat HIV or Hepatitis C and medication used to treat other conditions such as erectile dysfunction, influenza and hepatitis.
These studies require at least one 12 hour day at the clinic when blood samples are taken a regular times to measure the levels of both drugs.
As well as this we are preparing to take part in a series of HIV vaccine studies. These will be trials looking at new vaccines, new strategies and new methods of delivering the vaccines.
If you would like to take part in an HIV vaccine trial as a healthy volunteer you can register your interest at www.helpmake history.mrc.ac.uk which is a national network for volunteers and contains lot of useful information about participating
If you would like any further information on the work we do or to see if you are able to take part in any of the trials please feel free to call us or pop into the Centre for a chat.
