Digital contact tracing can slow or even stop coronavirus transmission and ease us out of lockdown

23 April 2020

A team from NDM's Big Data Institute is sharing an epidemiological model to help configure a contact tracing app for coronavirus.

The model offers several safe configurations to introduce an app and a framework to optimise the app after it is released. The simulations confirm that if around half the total population use the app, alongside other interventions, it has the potential to stop the epidemic and help to keep countries out of lockdown. These research efforts are supporting several European projects including the UK’s national programme led by NHSX, a joint unit comprised of teams from NHS England and the Department of Health & Social Care.

World’s largest clinical trial for COVID-19 treatments expands internationally

18 February 2021

The Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) Trial, the world’s largest clinical trial for COVID-19 treatments, has now expanded internationally with Indonesia and Nepal among the first countries to join and recruited to RECOVERY International. NDM's Peter Horby, Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Global Health, and Joint Chief Investigator for the trial, said ‘The RECOVERY trial has been an enormous success, enrolling over 36,000 patients and delivering clear results on six treatments already. By building on this success through international partnership we can speed up the assessment of novel treatments, increase the global relevance of the trial results, build capacity, and reduce wasted efforts on small uninformative studies".

Exscientia and the University of Oxford announce partnership to develop treatments for Alzheimer’s disease

15 February 2021

Exscientia, the leading AI Drug Discovery company, has today announced its collaboration with the Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute (ARUK-ODDI) to develop medicines targeting neuroinflammation for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

Tocilizumab reduces deaths in patients hospitalised with COVID-19

12 February 2021

The Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) has demonstrated that an anti-inflammatory treatment, tocilizumab, reduces the risk of death when given to hospitalised patients with severe COVID-19.

Common asthma treatment reduces need for hospitalisation in COVID-19 patients, study suggests

10 February 2021

Early treatment with a medication commonly used to treat asthma appears to significantly reduce the need for urgent care and hospitalisation in people with COVID-19, researchers at the University of Oxford have found.

Oxford Cancer Centre appoints Professor Tim Elliot as new co-director

29 January 2021

The CRUK Oxford Centre is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Tim Elliot as its new co-Director. Tim has recently joined the Nuffield Department of Medicine and Oriel College as the Kidani Professor of Immuno-Oncology. He re-joins the Oxford community from Southampton University, having previously completed his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at Balliol and subsequently holding a Professorial post at the Weatherall Institute for Molecular Medicine.

Lateral flow devices detect most infectious COVID-19 cases and could allow a safer relaxation of the current lockdown

22 January 2021

Researchers from NDM's Big Data Institute working with Public Health England and NHS Test and Trace, have used Test and Trace data to find out why some individuals pass COVID-19 on to their contacts more easily than others, and if lateral flow tests are sufficient in detecting those who are most infectious