COVID-19 Research Themes

Liverpool (University of Liverpool (UoL), Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the NHS all joined by Liverpool Health Partners) has united to redirect the majority of its research efforts to COVID-19.  Research programs designed to have immediate benefits for public health.  This programme is supported by approximately £1 million in pump priming from the University of Liverpool and The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and the efforts of >200 researchers, underpinned by equipment and laboratory space across the Liverpool City Region. 

The #Liverpool_Malawai_COVID19 research effort consists of:

Clinical Characterisation and Biobanking
Diagnostics
Drug Discovery
Viral Dynamics and Protective Immunity
Pathogen Biology
Epidemiology and Public Health Informatics
Therapeutics, Early Phase Clinical Trials and Pharmacokinetics-Pharmacodynamics
Vaccines
Knowledge Mobilisation, Public and Community Involvement

Latest COVID-19 News

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COVID-19 Projects

ISARIC-4C Study

CO-CIN

Prof Calum Semple, member of the HPRU and the ISARIC-4C consortium, is analysing and reporting clinical characteristics of patients admitted to hospital with SARS-CoV-2 infection in near real-time to the COVID-19 Clinical Information Network (CO-CIN). CO-CIN informs the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on a weekly basis about the clinical evolution of disease in the United Kingdom. To achieve this, clinical research nurses and administrators gather anonymised data from clinical notes and enter it into a simple online database. This allows to characterise the patients’ clinical features as well as risk factors associated with severity, risk of hospitalisation and death. The information gathered is essential to help health service planning and provision, and to rapidly evaluate the impact of interventions such as new therapeutics or vaccines. The first summary report is available here.

Prof Calum Semple is leading an International Severe Acute Respiratory and Emerging Infection Consortium (ISARIC) - Clinical Characterisation Protocol UK (CCP-UK), a nationwide observational study that is intended to activate in the event of the appearance or outbreak of a disease of public health importance. Calum’s Medical Research Council-funded CCP-UK study, with additional support from the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at Liverpool, is collecting clinical data and biological samples to describe and characterise COVID-19 disease, inform management, and to act as a platform for clinical trials into new treatments. Samples from patients have been shared with co-applicants at Liverpool, Glasgow, Bristol and Public Health England (PHE).

Dr Lance Turtle is receiving CCP-UK acute blood samples which will be used for flow cytometry to investigate the role of cellular immunity in COVID-19 disease. Turtle also collects convalescent samples from recovered patients and contribute to an epitope mapping project with colleagues in Sheffield and Oxford.

Prof Julian Hiscox is developing rapid approaches for sequencing SARS-CoV-2 in samples from patients as well as validating animal models for vaccine development and medical countermeasures. With Profs Al Darby and Steve Patterson in the Centre for Genomic Research (CGR) at the University of Liverpool, his laboratory are part of a PHE funded collaboration to provide virus sequencing for transmission studies in real time. His team are also working on samples from the CCP-UK study.

See update here

Understanding the dynamics of policy development and healthcare worker behaviour in the UK during the COVID-19 public health emergency

In an infectious disease outbreak public health policymakers are under tremendous pressure, especially from the media. They must respond rapidly to and take decisions which impact enormously on healthcare provision.

Prof Sally Sheard and colleagues are studying conventional and social media trends during the COVID-19 epidemic, and are linking these to changes in UK policy, gaining unique insights through collaboration with key policy players. These include members of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) that advises the Government, and Public Health England leaders. These experts are recording information on key meetings and events, and giving regular interviews their perspectives can be captured in real-time.

Sheard's team also examines the impact of the policy changes on healthcare workers in general practice and hospitals, through interviews and observations. Healthcare workers' perspective on delivering care during the epidemic, and how they perceive the changes in policy is fed back to policymakers during the outbreak. The approach is novel because policy decisions are usually only studied after an event, making the findings less reliable.

This research was piloted with pump-prime funding from the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at Liverpool, and has been scaled up with support from the Medical Research Council.

Dr Emily Adams, Senior Lecturer in Diagnostics for Infectious Disease, at LSTM has begun the validation process for the Mologic COVID-19 point-of-need diagnostic test:

• Independent assessment and validation of COVID-19 diagnostic test has been initiated at LSTM by Dr Adams and her research group, along with colleagues at St George's University London
• Prototypes will be sent to world-leading labs in the UK, Senegal, Spain, China, Malaysia and Brazil for priority validation
• COVID-19 tests will be jointly manufactured in the UK at Mologic and in Senegal at Institut Pasteur de Dakar for the first time
• Dr Adams said: “These tests could be a game-changer for diagnosis and follow-up of patients both in hospital and in the community, allowing us to detect cases early and isolate patients and their families rapidly.”

Emily commented: “We are extremely pleased to be working alongside Mologic and diaTROPiX on the evaluation and validation of rapid diagnostic tests for COVID-19. These tests could be a game changer for diagnosis and follow-up of patients both in hospital and in the community, allowing us to detect cases early and isolate patients and their families rapidly. Of course in low-resource settings, where we are starting to see cases, these are the only tests that are appropriate for use. We need to manufacture and deliver as soon as we possibly can”  Read more here

Funding has been awarded to 22 projects across the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) and the University of Liverpool (UoL) in response to COVID-19, working with the NHS and industry partners.

Each project and lead is outlined below:        

Latest COVID-19 Publications