Global consortium to prepare research community for future health threats

Published: 8-Dec-2011

Includes more than 20 hospital-based clinical research networks


A new international consortium launched by a group of leading medical research funders from the UK, US, France, Hong Kong and Singapore, aims to ensure that the clinical research community is prepared for any future influenza pandemic or public health threat.

The International Severe Acute Respiratory Infection Consortium (ISARIC), conceived by The Wellcome Trust, the UK Medical Research Council, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Inserm (the French National Health and Medical Research Unit), Li Ka Shing-University of Oxford Global Health Programme and the Singapore Ministry of Health, is a global collaboration of more than 20 hospital-based clinical research networks.

The aim is to ensure that clinical researchers have in place the necessary open access protocols and data-sharing processes – and have considered the ethical issues – for a rapid response to emerging diseases with epidemic or pandemic potential, such as the recent H1N1 influenza and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) outbreaks.

The initial focus will be on clinical research with hospitalised patients to understand the causes of severe acute respiratory diseases, discover how these illnesses develop and progress in patients, and identify the best ways to treat the patients and prevent transmission.

These studies will be undertaken both in the inter-pandemic period and in response to emerging threats.

The Consortium would like not only to undertake high-quality clinical research on a global scale but also change the way such research is conducted in epidemic settings. It will also provide training, strengthen capacity and engage with the public.

The initial chairman of ISARIC will be Professor Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust Vietnam Research Programme and Oxford University Clinical Research Unit Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Vietnam.

‘Clinical research will form a crucial element in the response to new epidemics and pandemics, and it is essential that we are prepared,’ said Professor Farrar.

‘The processes needed to initiate clinical studies and share data and samples effectively can take time to establish, but the faster we can react and the more trust we have built before the outbreak, the more effective will be our response and the more lives we can potentially save.’

The Consortium said significant disease outbreaks occur regularly and with increasing frequency around the globe, and they are not all influenza-related. They include, for example, dengue, nipah and viral haemorrhagic fevers, artemisinin-resistant malaria and many others.

The response of the clinical research community has been slow in almost all of these cases, says Professor Farrar.

ISARIC will develop and implement standardised protocols, metrics and data-sharing processes and will operate with pre-approved, open-access protocols that can be rapidly implemented in response to novel threats. This will ensure that researchers from high- and low-income countries are able to work to or adapt the same protocols and share data sets that are compatible, it says. Its focus will initially be on respiratory infections, but it is hoped that this will extend to other areas in the future.

More than 20 networks are already signed up to ISARIC, spanning all six populated continents. This will allow for rapid recruitment of patients across a range of income settings on a scale that is only possible with such a global collaboration, the Consortium says.

ISARIC is also working very closely with the InFACT Network, a newly formed network of 17 investigator-led intensive care research groups from countries around the world.

You may also like