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<p>The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) works closely with its partners
- including charities, other public funders and industry – to ensure the best possible
environment for supporting clinical trials. In particular, the NIHR funds infrastructure
in the National Health Service to support research and trials, providing the expertise
and facilities for high quality research which aims to speed up translation from clinical
research to patient benefits.</p><p> </p><p>To aid in the delivery of early phase
musculoskeletal research, the NIHR has a number of Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs)
with musculoskeletal research themes. These are partnerships between leading NHS organisations
and universities, which focus on conducting early translational research. There were
351 musculoskeletal research studies across the BRCs and Biomedical Research Units
in 2016-17. The NIHR Translational Research Collaboration in joint and related inflammatory
diseases brings together internationally recognised investigators in the United Kingdom's
leading centres of excellence to carry out early phase research.</p><p> </p><p>In
addition, NIHR Medtech and In vitro diagnostics Co-operatives build expertise and
capacity in the NHS to develop new medical technologies and provide evidence on commercially-supplied
in vitro diagnostic tests. The Leeds In Vitro Diagnostics Co-operative has a musculoskeletal
theme.</p><p> </p><p>Support for muscular wasting disease research is one of the NIHR’s
great success stories. Laboratory findings have been taken into NIHR early phase research
facilities and developed target products to be trialled in NIHR Paediatric Clinical
Research Facilities. These earlier trials are spread across all NHS England Specialised
Commissioning funded Muscle Centres and using the support of the NIHR Clinical Research
Network have resulted in translating new products for approval by regulators. This
work has been done in collaboration with charities and provides a model for building
capacity in rare diseases. There is also a further rich vein of commercial clinical
trials becoming available for rare muscle wasting diseases. The NIHR and NHS England
are committed to ensuring these studies are prioritised through the centres in line
with the NIHR/NHS England joint statement on research from November 2017. Further
information and the response to the subsequent consultation was published on 4 May
2018:</p><p> </p><p><a href="https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/supporting-research-in-the-nhs-consultation-response.pdf"
target="_blank">https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/supporting-research-in-the-nhs-consultation-response.pdf</a></p>
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