Collaborations

• NIHR Manchester Clinical Research Facility (CRF)
  Jacky Smith NIHR Manchester CRF Director is also our Improving Respiratory Symptoms Lead and Alex Horsley, Medical Director, Manchester CRF at Wythenshawe Hospital.
• NIHR Clinical Research Network
  Paul Dark is the NIHR Clinical Research Network National Specialty Lead for Critical Care.
• NIHR Clinical Research Network Greater Manchester: Leads for Critical Care (Tim Felton) and Children (Clare Murray).
• The NIHR Respiratory Translational Research Collaboration (Respiratory TRC) brings together internationally recognised investigators in the UK’s leading centres of excellence to carry out experimental and early phase research with industry, charities and other funders. The TRC is currently led by Alex Horsley.
• NIHR Centre for Precision Approaches to Combatting Antimicrobial Resistance
  The Centre identifies antimicrobial stewardship interventions to improve antibiotic use and tackle the threat of antimicrobial resistance allowing us to live healthier, longer lives; led by Tim Felton.

NIHR Senior Investigators
Our Respiratory theme joins researchers with charities, industry and key infrastructure support to combat the burden of respiratory diseases.

These include:

• North West Lung Centre
• Fungal Infection Trust
• Global Action Fund for Fungal Infections

COPD

In the UK, our theme is part of the MRC funded COPD-MAP and founding partner of the UK Early COPD cohort funded by the British Lung Foundation and industry. We are part of the recently established European project CADSET – Chronic Airway Diseases Stratification by Endotypes. We are world-leading in clinical trials in COPD and work with almost all pharmaceutical companies with an interest in COPD.

Infection

Our fungal disease research is undertaken in the UK and across the world, currently in Uganda, Nigeria and Indonesia. We partner with diagnostic and antifungal development companies to deliver a better understanding of fungal diseases, optimise diagnostics and therapies, and identify resistance. A major theme is chronic pulmonary aspergillosis after Tuberculosis (TB), on which we have worked with the World Health Organisation to develop a definition of disease for low resource settings. Fungal diagnostic provision is part of the solution to AMR, to reduce antibacterial empiricism.

Symptoms

Our theme is mainly focused on understanding mechanisms in refractory and unexplained chronic cough supporting a Wellcome Investigator Award exploring the role of ATP in Chronic Cough. We are leading trials to assess novel therapies for chronic cough using our cough monitoring system, in particular a new class of therapies known as P2X3 antagonists. We are also part of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) funded NeuroCough registry. Finally we are investigating the hazards of indoor and outdoor pollution and developing tools to test and treat Inducible laryngeal obstruction.