Edinburgh and the Lothians are on the eastern side of Scotland’s central belt in the heart of the country. Four main areas make up Edinburgh and the Lothians – Edinburgh, East, Mid and West Lothian. The geographical area known as Lothian region covers 700 square miles, comprising the City of Edinburgh, Midlothian, East Lothian and West Lothian.

Academic and Clinical Central Office for Research and Development (ACCORD) is a partnership between the University of Edinburgh (UoE) and NHS Lothian (NHSL), combining clinical research expertise. There is a long-standing, close and well-developed partnership between the UoE and NHSL, and our joint research office offers a single point of access to the world class clinical research infrastructure and expertise of both institutions. 

ACCORD supports approximately 900 projects every year recruiting approx.10,000 participants, ranging from single centre proof of concept studies to complex interventional investigations and multicentre international trials (40% UoE / NHSL Co-Sponsored, 60% Hosted). 

We work closely with industry to deliver a growing portfolio of commercial and investigator-led studies across a broad spectrum of disease, and we provide advanced infrastructure to enable the development and execution of increasingly complicated and innovative projects. We work in close partnership with our colleagues in Edinburgh’s Clinical Research Facilities (CRFs), Edinburgh Imaging (EI), Edinburgh Clinical Trials Unit (ECTU) and NHS Lothian’s NHS Research Scotland (NRS) Biorepository to deliver this portfolio. 

Funding allocations from NHS Research Scotland (NRS) have remained stable and are allocated across a range of services and activities to support key infrastructure, clinical support and researchers. The University has also successfully attracted investment for spin out companies – Resolution Therapeutics Ltd (est. 2020) is developing cell therapies to repair organs damaged by disease, including Liver Cirrhosis and Trogenix Ltd (est. 2023) specialising in a therapeutic platform for treating aggressive cancers, the lead programme targeting glioblastoma.

NHS Lothian is also home to the Edinburgh Cancer Centre (ECC) which is part of the South-East Scottish Cancer Research Network (SESCRN) which encompasses several partners involved in the delivery of cancer clinical trials to patients across the southeast of Scotland, including: 4 NHS Boards and 8 hospital sites across NHS Lothian, NHS Borders, NHS Fife and NHS Dumfries & Galloway, Cancer Research UK, and Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre. 

The ECC also hosts a Cancer Research UK Centre with the specialist services to deliver early phase clinical trials. The centre sees 9,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients per year across the SESCRN region. The team consent 1,000 new patients into cancer clinical trials per year and have around 150 ‘active’ clinical trials registered on SESCRN’s EDGE database providing trials for all tumour types.

 The ECC has 60 clinicians, 30 nurses and 21 data managers actively involved in clinical trials across the region. SESCRN is divided into 8 teams, each with a clinical lead and these teams provide support for clinical trials in different tumour types

The Southeast Scotland Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplant Service is coordinated and located in the Western General Hospital, Edinburgh, which serves 1.5 million people across NHS Lothian, NHS Borders, NHS Fife and NHS Dumfries & Galloway. The service runs in partnership with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service (SNBTS) who provide Human Tissue Authority  (HTA) accredited stem cell laboratory and cryostorage at the Jack Copland Centre, Herriot Watt, and cell collection at Royal Infirmary Edinburgh. The 19 bedded inpatient unit and ambulatory day unit (chairs and rooms) are fully JACIE (Joint Accreditation Committee of ISCT & EBMT) certified for Autologous Stem Cell Transplant and Immune Effector Cell (IEC) Therapy. The service delivers both licensed and investigational CAR-T products for both malignant and non-malignant indications and benefits from direct admission rights from our Cancer Assessment Unit. 

Edinburgh has over 20 years experience in delivering Advanced Therapies and is currently lead site/Chief Investigator on 6 Advanced Therapy Investigational Medicinal Product (ATiMP) trials across multiple indications. In order to support ATiMP trials within NHS Lothian a dedicated Advanced Therapy Medicinal Products (ATMP) team has been formed to assist with set up, logistics and running of the trial, if required. To date the team have accelerated the set up and supported the multidisciplinary team with the running of two non-haematological chimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cells trials across multiple sites. This has proved a worthwhile investment with further trials currently in the set-up phase.