Bench to bedside really implies the analysis
of a particular idea.
So the idea behind a scientific discovery,
then taking that into the laboratory; that's the
bench part where you do a fundamental experiments
to test out either a hypothesis, a scientific
thought and idea, or to test a novel creation of a
diagnostic, for example.
And then ultimately if you're designing, for
example, a novel drug for a particular disease,
this has to be tested and this may be tested
in experimental animals, but ultimately will have
to be tested in patients for patient benefit.
And that's the bedside concept.
This also applies of course, to development
of novel diagnostics.
So in the case of novel diagnostics, you would
have the idea for the diagnostic, you would test
out all of the reagents and the different conditions
for running the test in the laboratory, and then
you get that into the clinic, to the bedside by
collecting clinical samples and testing them using
your novel diagnostic.
So from the bench to the bedside.
Going back into the lab was a great privilege
actually and I really, really enjoyed it, but
it took a lot of work to make sure that we are
COVID safe and COVID ready for our class three labs.
And a lot of people had to work very hard
to make this happen.
So I'm very, very grateful for everyone's
help and support.
But we got to the stage where we were permitted
to culture the virus.
And it was, I know lots of people probably don't
want to hear this, but.
it was just such a lovely thing to grow compared to
the hepatitis viruses that I'm used to growing in
the lab that are growing very difficult with great
difficulty in vitro, the Coronavirus was a breeze.
It would infect very easily on target cells, it
would spread very nicely.
And this is great news for research, really, because
this way you can develop your assay very quickly,
you validate them and you can test antivirals.
You can test disinfectants and you can progress
your research.
Before coronavirus hit my main interest was
understanding how people's immune systems recover
after having chemotherapy, mainly for blood cancers.
We were in the sort of early stages of developing
a fairly comprehensive research program to look
at that in more detail.
Now we've obviously had a pandemic that our immunology
research has contributed to in understanding the risk
that healthcare workers face when caring for
patients in the hospital and elsewhere, and that has
really sort of transformed what our clinical immunology
service has been doing on a day-to-day basis.
So my contribution has mainly been in the early
stages was around helping develop the antibody tests.
And we now work together as a fantastic team of
people like Alex Richter and with Mark Drayson
and many, many others.
In developing a test that focuses in on how
to identify people who've either been recently
infected or who have a relatively modest
responses to the virus.
So all of this was a massively accelerated
program; what would normally take a few
years, we achieved in a few weeks, and this was
not least in part because our ability to work with
the Binding Site who have been awesome partners in this.
And also just the natural collaborative environment
that exists in Birmingham.
So we were always working together, we've always
had a very good working relationship, is one of the
great strengths of here.
But every time we came to a door, we found that
door to be open and that just accelerated research.
In the early stages of the pandemic we recognised
that the tests that were available for testing for
antibodies were perhaps not the greatest tests.
And we went back to the bench to see whether
we could do better and that involved some broad
collaborations with scientists across the
University, and also scientists elsewhere, who
were experts at making protein, particularly
with the University of Southampton.
And really the first thing we did was to try and just
make a better test and that involved a lot of work, a
lot of gathering samples from people who we knew
had had COVID and putting that all together into a
brand new test which has since being commercialised
and this is now available for people to buy.
Very early in the pandemic we had to stay open
as a department in the University because we are
an NHS facing laboratory.
And so we would key staff and we had to keep working.
We realised very early on that there was a
real need for testing.
If you remember the government's rollout of both
antibody and PCR testing for the virus didn't happen
until much later in the spring and the early summer.
And so we decided to use our expertise in diagnostics
and basic immunology to build our own COVID
antibody test, which is what we've been working on.
And this requires a really significant
collaboration and a pulling together of ourselves
in clinical diagnostics and the basic scientists
in our Institute., in particular Adam
Cunningham and his group.
And then also our commercial partners in
this the Binding Site.
And it's how we've all worked together with all
the University legal, communications teams,
IP teams, to launch a product from conception
to see marketing and launch in four months.
Both ends, we're both the lab and basic science end,
but we're also outlet in the NHS and throughout
the whole pandemic we've been engaged with what's
happening with patients and with NHS staff, dentist,
whole cohorts of people.
Getting literally thousands of samples of blood and also
other things like saliva so that we can help develop our
tests, but also apply this test to find out what was
happening in the pandemic.
So for instance, back in March and April, when we
were just starting out learning what's going
to happen we were able to find it how many
healthcare workers that already been infected.
And we were great surprised that even before
patients with COVID were admitted to the hospital,
many of the healthcare staff had actually
already been infected.
I guess at home, out in the community and
between colleagues.
And then following up those individuals, now we're
six and nine months down the line from those early
days, we can see what's happened to their immunity
to SARS-CoV-2 virus.
How has it evolved?
How has it matured?
Is it maintained?
These really important questions.
The most rewarding things that I've been doing during
this pandemic is being able to support the work
that our clinicians are doing here in Birmingham.
We are able to get blood from patients that have had
COVID, immediately following infection and months later,
we are able to detect antibodies in those samples
and see how people respond to the new Coronavirus and
this is work led by Alex Richter here in Birmingham.
So the clinical labs have developed really sensitive
assays to pick up those antibodies to the virus.
But we would really like to find out is if
these antibodies are functional, so can they
neutralise infection?
And this is where my lab comes in.
Being able to culture the Coronavirus at category
three labs means that I'm able to test antibodies
from our patients to see if they're able to
neutralise infection.
And this is not a surrogate system, this is using a
fully replicating virus, so we can assign functionality
to the antibodies with our assays in a matter of days.
So it has been really interesting because we
didn't know what to expect from this new infection.
We didn't know whether people were able to mind
strong enough immunity to the virus, but now we
appreciate that we are able to generate antibodies that
are potent neutralisers and they can persist for
longer periods of time.
The COVID-19 pandemic has really brought
out the very best in people in our Institute.
There are people working on fundamental immunology, we
have clinical immunologists who are looking after
patients, we have teams of people working in
the laboratories doing clinical immunology
testing and developing novel diagnostics.
And this year in the face of this pandemic, it became
clear that there was a real need to develop a
true diagnostic test for the antibodies against
this particular virus.
And it's been incredibly gratifying to seeing all
the people, too many to name one by one, from the very
fundamental immunologists through to the clinicians,
the patent lawyers, the business engagement people,
through to our colleagues in the University who've
been communicating all our successes so effectively
and finally to the wonderful team at the binding site
in Birmingham, without whom we wouldn't have been able
to take this test literally from the bench to the
bedside and onto the market.