New £4m initiative to tackle Covid
UNIVERSITY TEAM TO WORK ON ANTIBODY RESEARCH PROJECT
A NEW multi-million-pound research project involving Nottingham experts will help scientists across the UK access data more easily to help develop potential therapies and treatment for Covid19.
Experts from the University of Nottingham, other leading UK universities, and Public Health England will build the infrastructure for “CO-CONNECT”, a £4 million Uk-wide initiative to support research into the Covid-19 antibody response.
The aim is to build the data infrastructure needed to ensure researchers are able to answer questions around how immunity may help prevent the virus spreading in schools and workplaces in the future, how best to treat it in hospitals, and generally how long immunity lasts.
As there is currently limited evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 have antibodies to protect them from reinfection, understanding who is immune, and to what level, is considered vital to protect vulnerable individuals.
Philip Quinlan, head of the digital research service at the University of Nottingham, said: “We are really excited to be bringing together the best of the UK’S data assets into an accessible format.
“It will ensure leading researchers have access to the latest data and at the scale required to give definitive answers to some of the most significant questions that require an answer.
“We are really thankful to all the leading organisations that have come together to make this possible in the spirit of collaboration under the vision of ensuring data can help save lives.”
This new 18-month project aims to ensure the same standards are applied to all data to make the data comparable and usable in research.
CO-CONNECT will connect Covid19 data derived from patient blood samples in a project funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).
Universities featuring in the research include the University of Dundee and University of Edinburgh.
Professor Emily Jefferson, professor of health data science at the University of Dundee, said: “We are delighted to be working with leading experts at Nottingham and Edinburgh on the CO-CONNECT platform.
“This is a fantastic project, which will deliver new capabilities across the country to help us in our fight against Covid-19.”
CO-CONNECT will support access to information from 44 sources, standardising antibody data collection from across the UK and building a secure and trustworthy federated platform for researchers to access.
The project is an example of the cross-sector work being co-ordinated by HDR UK, the UK’S national institute for health data science.
As a member of the UK Health Data Research Alliance, the University of Nottingham is one of a number of leading healthcare and research organisations that have come together to establish best practice for the ethical use of UK health data for research at scale.
How the University of Nottingham has curbed cases of Covid-19, Page 17.