The Sheffield BRC continues to be a driving force for innovation and collaboration in the NIHR landscape, working with local, regional and national NIHR initiatives and infrastructure and striving to always embody the “One NIHR” vision. 

Local NIHR Collaborations 

Strategic partnerships with the NIHR Sheffield Clinical Research Facility and HealthTech Research Centre in Long Term Conditions (Devices for Dignity) allow sharing expertise through joint appointments, co-managed projects and initiatives, and integrated governance. 

• 46 BRC-CRF joint projects

• 15 BRC-HRC joint projects

Highlights include the successful BRC/CRF Showcase in May 2024, which strengthened research connections across Sheffield. 

Regional NIHR Collaborations 

Sheffield BRC are a member of the:

• Northern BRC Collective alongside the Northern Health Science Alliance, with Manchester/Leeds/Newcastle BRCs. The group has established effective partnerships and knowledge exchange across: Industry, Imaging, Data, Training, PPIE and the strategic Northern BRC Operations Network.

• Yorkshire and Humber One NIHR group which ensures a joined-up approach to capacity building across NIHR infrastructures. Through this group the Sheffield BRC provided support to the NIHR Y&H ARC renewal submission.

Translational Research Collaborations (TRCs)

Sheffield BRC are members of and contributing to the:

• NIHR Dementia TRC

• NIHR-BHF Cardiovascular Partnership

• NIHR Respiratory TRC

Our investigators expertise supports key themes across the TRCs including cardiovascular and maternal health, digital and computer modelling, biomarker discovery and increasing capacity for early phase research.

National NIHR Collaborations 

NIHR Informatics Group

Actively supporting key initiatives and working groups to support broader developments and to deliver national policies:

• Secure Data Environments working group

• BRC Digital Assets and Capabilities

• Policy and Strategy

NIHR Imaging Group

11 Sheffield PIs and ECRs presented at the network meeting in 2025 on MRI, CT and optical imaging technologies.

We lead on a national xenon MRI clinical imaging network having provided sites at BRCs in Oxford/Cambridge/UCL/Leicester/Manchester with Sheffield generated MRI pulse sequences, RF coil solutions and xenon polariser systems for turnkey xenon MRI.

EXPERTS-ALS

Sheffield co-lead with Oxford the EXPERTS-ALS national NIHR funded programme which aims to screen candidate drugs for ALS (the commonest form of motor neurone disease) more quickly, identifying those with likely clinical benefit to prioritise for testing in larger trials.

NIHR PPIE Leads Group

Our PPIE Leads serve as co-chairs to this group, alongside Oxford BRC members.

MLTC Cross-NIHR Collaboration

One of our BRC-funded investigators (EDI co-lead) is involved in the Multiple Long-Term Conditions Cross-NIHR Collaboration as a co-lead for an inequalities cross cutting theme.

Key Strategic Partnerships 

• PAREXEL Alliance Site and IQVIA Northern Prime Site collaborations:
  Expanding access to patients, investigator capacity development and improving efficiency/quality of clinical trials.

• Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA):
  Collaborating with partners within NHSA in the development of the Institute for Preventative Health Research and across Data Innovation workstreams.

• MRC/LifeArc Gene Therapy Innovation and Manufacturing Centre (GTIMC):
  Accelerating development of gene therapy programmes by partnering with industry, creating new manufacturing processes, IP for out-licensing/collaborative R&D, and producing an advanced therapies industry workforce.

• Advanced Therapy Treatment Centres (ATTC) Pan UK forum:
  Collaborating nationally to develop innovative ATMP trial design, harnessing national expertise, and partnering with Industry to leverage the UKs position as a preferred environment for ATMP trials.

We partner with STH Clinical Research and Innovation Office and UoS Innovation, Knowledge Exchange and Commercialisation Team; fostering partnerships/collaborations with pharmaceutical and life sciences companies to support the translational pipeline across the BRC. Our themes maximise collaborative links with industry partners, this year leveraging: 

• >£3.7million from industry collaborations/partnerships 

• >£1.1million in commercial trial income 

• 18 new partnerships with commercial organisations 

We foster industry relationships to effectively: 

• Deploy spinout companies 

• Strengthen infrastructure 

• Deliver impactful and innovative projects and initiatives 

Translational Neuroscience Theme

• Our teams are specialist in deploying industry-backed spin-out companies (Crucible Therapeutics, Aclipse Therapeutics, BlackfinBio), developing novel treatments and technologies poised for clinical trial initiation.

• Our Dementia investigators continue to lead innovation in collaboration with industry partners, Eli Lilly, expanding CSF biomarker testing for patients and upskilling nurses to deliver LPs in clinical trials.

• EXPERTS-ALS investigators have instigated commercial partnerships within the IMP identification workstream of the program.

• Harnessing the internationally renowned expertise of our MS and neuromuscular investigators, Sheffield is leading international industry CAR-T trials.

Cardiovascular Disease Theme

• In collaboration with Novartis, we have completed translational work on SMURF1 as a therapeutic target in pulmonary arterial hypertension leading to phase II development.

• With MSD, we are confirming using novel implanted pulmonary artery pressure monitors to optimize therapies and deliver personalized medicine in pulmonary hypertension.

• Through work with AstraZeneca and Novo Nordisk, we have led national trials and programmes of work through to Phase III in atherothrombosis.

• Within medical technology and digital, our investigators partner with Google Health to deliver a vital programme of research to explore digital solutions for early diagnosis of cardiovascular disease and its risk factors

Infection and Immunity Theme

• Collaborations with Pfizer, GSK and Perrigo see us testing and supporting monoclonal antibodies and other novel therapies.

• Partnering with GSK, we support development of new therapeutics and vaccines for the AMR pathogen Staphylococcus aureus.

• With AstraZeneca, we lead a study generating disease burden data on respiratory viruses in vulnerable populations for future vaccine rollout.

• In diagnostics, we are working with Oxford Nanopore Technologies to bring genomic assays into routine NHS use.

Imaging and Engineering Theme

• Our investigators long-standing relationship with GE HealthCare has developed novel imaging hardware which is now clinically available or being pulled through into device trials.

• In smart devices, sensors and wearables, BRC investigators partner with Google Health. The partnership has successfully embedded Fitbits and smartphone sensors into projects across clinical cohorts. Investigators are further collaborating with Google to apply the Gemini Large Language Model.

Our research themes bring together dynamic teams of internationally leading researchers and rising stars from a range of disciplines to achieve our BRC aim of bridging the gap between new discoveries and improved patient care. We fund a wide range of people, including consultants, doctors, clinical and pre-clinical researchers, healthcare and non-medical professionals and students. 

• 47 BRC-funded academy members

• 27 BRC-funded investigators

• 28 infrastructure centre staff

Academic Career Development 

Training the next generation of research leaders and preparing Allied Health Professions for the future of healthcare is a major objective of the Sheffield BRC. 

We aim to attract, develop and retain the best new researchers by:

• encouraging opportunities for strategic collaborations for our researchers

• driving initiatives to support greater gender balance in academic research

• promoting interdisciplinary research to drive innovation that will deliver intelligent medicine to patients and the health system

In the last 12 months, we have more than doubled our BRC funded academy members: 

22 > 47

We successfully implemented BRC training academy associate membership, supporting those helping to achieve theme objectives, even when not directly funded. Associates are invited to training events, receive ACD-related emails, and can access BRC funding opportunities. 

Top five key ACD achievements this year: 

1. We hosted our first annual presentation day. Doctoral students presented orally; other members presented posters. An external panel provided feedback and awarded prizes. 

2. We funded five students through the Sheffield Undergraduate Research Experience (SURE), supporting them to complete a summer placement working on research.

• Three students are now considering a career in research, two of them reporting this was a direct result of SURE

• One student subsequently presented at an international conference and PPIE event, and is currently developing a publication.

SURE also benefited supervisors; all reporting that expectations were met/exceeded and helped develop them as an ECR. One won a supervision prize.

3. Supported 15 pump-priming clinical fellowships, providing time/experience to develop successful applications for career development awards. 

4. We increased capacity of the Healthcare Professional (HCP) Internship Scheme, providing funding for HCP interns working on research projects supporting theme objectives, collaborating with NIHR Sheffield CRF and STH to administer this scheme. Through this scheme we funded a dietician, physiotherapist, cardiac physiologist, occupational therapist and clinical trials assistant; professions which are often excluded due to lack of professional registration.

• One intern went on to obtain pre-application support funding to continue their academic career.

5. Recruited nine healthcare professionals to the Pre-Application Support Fund Scheme, starting April 2025. 

In 24/25, our funded BRC training academy members have: 

• Delivered 59 oral/poster presentations and won 8 prizes 

• Developed a documentary for Parkinson’s patients within UK South Asian community 

• Written for Readable Research which received 32k worldwide website visitors and 311 newsletter subscriptions last year

• Obtained further career development funding (2 NIHR ACFs, 2 postdoctoral positions, 2 fellowships) 

• Co-authored 37 journal publications 

• Been appointed to the trainee editorial board of Radiology: Artificial Intelligence 

• Organised BSCI 2024 conference 

Research inclusion (RI) is embedded throughout NIHR Sheffield BRC. Our core team work with our RI Co-Leads and an expert team of Community Engagement, Ethnic Diversity and Primary Care leaders, research fellows and a PhD student to promote more inclusive research involvement, participation and engagement across themes. 

We also work closely with our NIHR infrastructure colleagues in the CRF, developing and implementing joint PPIE and EDI strategies which can be viewed on our website:

Click here for our PPIE strategy

Click here for our EDI strategy

Our vision is to embed RI across the lifecycle of clinical research that we conduct, from informing research priorities to study design and how we disseminate results. We want to ensure the trials we deliver serve the needs of patients, the community and the NHS, and want our findings to be communicated effectively. 

Key initiatives and impact: 

• BRC researchers co-created CognoSpeak (a new AI tool that could help doctors assess the early signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s more quickly and efficiently) with the Somali community at the ISRAAC centre. Three new centres have been added to this project focusing on the recruitment of ethnic minority groups, to ensure inclusion of diverse communities based on language, cultural and socioeconomic background. This team won an international EDI “Made With Patients Award”. 

• Our EDI Senior Research Fellow secured additional funding to build capacity and further expand the BRC RI team. This led to the appointment of two additional staff members. 

• Our BRC funded PhD explores inclusive recruitment/retention strategies for ethnic minority groups in clinical trials. They are undertaking a scoping review to identify what recruitment/retention methods have been tested and evaluated in practice and with which groups. This will help us identify what the state of current evidence is and for which groups, and inform the subsequent work, including methods to test and with which groups to do this. The review findings will also enable the RI team to provide tailored recommendations to researchers on which methods are potentially evidence-based, and which methods of recruitment/retention could benefit from further testing. 

Key initiatives and impact: 

Community Outreach Programme

We established our Community Outreach Programme, aiming to build relationships with local groups and understand their priorities. Through this, we have built relationships with local group SACMHA, resulting in new representatives from Sheffield’s African and Caribbean communities attending Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN) open day and taking part in research for the first time. By raising awareness and engaging with the Black African community group, their ongoing relationship has enabled recruitment to the BioResource bank to grow to 531 participants and sparked further engagement between the BRC and the African and Caribbean communities. Our teams continue to attend community events, for example the Madina Mosque Health and Wellbeing Day to raise awareness of research and build new relationships, asking attendees “What does research mean to you?”. Learnings from this programme will be developed into a guidance document including information on how best to approach groups and build reciprocal relationships. 

Diversification of existing PPIE groups

We have been promoting our existing PPIE groups across communities at local events which has led to more interest and hopefully will allow us to increase diverse membership. 

Delivering training and workshops

PPIE training workshops for Computer Science and Insigneo Institute colleagues were designed and inclusively opened to include PhD students, after recognising a lack of PPIE knowledge in underrepresented disciplines. The workshop included public contributors who shared their experience with taking part in research. 

PPIE specific funding 

Our Sheffield BRC PPIE rolling call funding is pump-priming funding which enables activity to be piloted. Through this, we have enabled further PPIE activity in our research themes, evidenced by the uptake in our early career researchers using the funding. Some have been empowered to try PPIE for the first time, have expanded existing PPIE work to new communities (Arabic and Chinese) and even proposals for creating a podcast around vaccine hesitancy in the community. We are collating impact examples to publish on our website to share good practice and encourage further submissions. 

Supporting industry

We partnered with commercial device company (AtriCure) to lead PPIE for their clinical trial HEAL-IST. The Sheffield-led Cardiovascular patient panel supported the development and review of patient facing documentation and were instrumental in improving readability and accessibility of study information. 

Better heart care with AI-supported scans

A pioneering automated artificial intelligence (AI) tool which provides a quick and comprehensive analysis of the heart’s function from cardiac MRI scans has been developed in Sheffield and could improve future care by aiding earlier, more efficient diagnosis for cardiovascular patients. 

The cardiac imaging AI model was developed to automate the analysis of complex, time consuming measurements of the hearts function which would usually be manually drawn and calculated by NHS radiographers and doctors. 

Automatic detection of the chambers of the heart >

Significant reduction of analysis time (35 minutes to just 90 seconds! >

Saves the NHS over 5,000 hours of manual analysis >

Staff time can be redirected to tasks that require critical clinical expertise

The model has been tested across 10,000 NHS MRI patients from 30 sites and showed less than 5% failure rates and over 95% clinical acceptability, validating its clinical value. It has earned recognition through the NHS Parliamentary Future NHS Awards 2023 and a feature on BBC Panorama in March 2025. 

IL2LD: A promising add-on therapy for MND

Motor neuron disease (MND) is progressive neurodegeneration of the specialised nerve cells enabling movement, fatal for most patients within 2-3 years from symptom onset. Neuroprotective therapies to slow or halt the progression are urgently needed. Riluzole, the only such therapy licenced in the UK extends survival by only ~3-months. 

We evaluated low-dose interleukin 2 (IL2LD) as an add-on therapy to riluzole in an international experimental medicine trial using biomarkers to show the drug hitting its target in the body and modifying an inflammatory component of the disease process. 

IL2LD was safe, well tolerated and showed good target engagement. In 79% of patients with slow/moderate disease progression rates, IL2LD approximately halved the risk of death at 21 months and slowed functional decline significantly. If licenced, this would benefit the majority of MND patients, tens of thousands across Europe (~4000 of ~5000, UK). 

New Sheffield pathogen sequencing laboratory

Diagnosing infections in NHS labs usually relies on growing microbes from patient samples, but this often fails—especially when patients have already received antibiotics or when the infection is caused by hard-to-detect organisms. A newer approach, called sequencing, looks at highly variable genes to identify pathogens more accurately. However, most NHS labs don’t have the equipment or expertise for this. 

NIHR Sheffield BRC funding was used to develop an in-house sequencing workflow using Oxford Nanopore technology. This approach was faster and more sensitive than outsourcing: results were ready in about 40 hours compared to 100 hours externally, and it detected all pathogens found by the external lab plus 20 additional clinically relevant organisms. We also built an automated analysis pipeline that produces easy-to-read reports for NHS clinicians without specialist bioinformatics skills. This workflow is now available as an open-access tool. 

We identified serious infections in half the time compared to outsourcing, enabling quicker treatment decisions. Building on this success, we have established a new clinical sequencing service within South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw Pathology, covering five NHS hospital trusts and serving 1.5 million people. NHS scientists have been trained, and key equipment funded by NIHR is in place. 

Life changing advanced therapies for neurological diseases 

Gene therapies have huge potential to treat a wide range of conditions, but rely on viral vectors. Manufacturing these to the high standards needed for clinical trials is complex and limited in the UK. The Gene Therapy Innovation and Manufacturing Centre (GTIMC) at the University of Sheffield was created to address this gap and includes a state-of-the-art GMP facility to produce clinical-grade vectors for NHS-led trials. 

The centre’s work is vital for tackling more than 7,000 rare diseases that currently have no cure. One example is BlackfinBio, a University of Sheffield spin-out, which has raised £2.75 million to develop a gene therapy for SPG47 hereditary spastic paraplegia—a rare childhood-onset neurological disorder. BlackfinBio’s therapy aims to deliver a functional copy of the AP4B1 gene to halt or reverse disease progression. GTIMC also plays a key role in training the next generation of scientists to address the UK’s skills gap in advanced therapy manufacturing. 

By combining cutting-edge science, manufacturing expertise, and workforce development, GTIMC is helping unlock life-changing treatments for patients who need them most.