Background of the LCTU
The original programme of national and UK-led international pancreatic cancer trials started in 1992 when Professor Neoptolemos and colleagues from other major centres in Europe set up the European Study Group for Pancreatic Cancer (ESPAC) to meet the needs of research in this area - previously almost entirely lacking. The original ESPAC-1 Trial was undertaken from the core funding of the CR-UK Birmingham Cancer Trials Unit.
The Cancer Research UK Trials Office in Liverpool was subsequently established in 1996 for the purpose of completing this trial and with the objective of developing further trials and up until recently this focused on centrally co-ordinated National and European pancreatic cancer trials. Increasing success with lung cancer molecular epidemiology studies led by Professor John Field was another important element that resulted in the creation of the LCTU, housing both the lung and pancreas cancer clinical groups in the new Liverpool University Cancer Research Centre.
Other parallel developments during this period were the creation of the Centre for Medical Statistics and Health Evaluation (CMSHE) and the recruitment of a number of leading cancer clinicians; all of these developments produced considerable pressure to expand the remit of the LCTU to include a much wider range of cancers. The high level of expertise and core competencies developed by the LCTU over the past nine years is well recognised and the LCTU Advisory Committee has considerable experience in developing research strategies to resolve important clinical questions across a number of disease sites:
- Pancreatic cancer
- Head and neck cancers
- Lung cancer
- Haematology
- Palliative care cancer work
- Urological cancers
There is an unusually strong clinical trials leadership as evidenced by membership of five NCRI Cancer Trials Groups: Upper Gastrointestinal (John Neoptolemos, Chairman Pancreas Cancer), Lung Cancer (John Field), Haemato-oncology Lymphoma (Andrew Pettitt) Haemato-oncology, Acute Myeloid and Chronic Myeloid Leukaemias (Richard Clark), Testis (Mark Fordham), Head and Neck (James Brown and Tim Helliwell) malignancies, Palliative Medicine (John Ellershaw) and Primary Care (Marie Lloyd-Williams). (As well as paediatric sarcomas - Heather McDowell).
Following a review by an international panel, the University of Liverpool Clinical Trials Research Centre (CTRC) has been assessed as reaching the highest quality standard required by the UK Clini-cal Research Collaboration (UKCRC). The UKCRC (www.ukcrc.org.uk) is a partnership working to establish the UK as a world leader in clinical research. The CTRC encompasses the Liverpool Cancer Trials Unit, the Medicine for Children Clinical Trials Unit and clinical trial staff from epilepsy, dental science, obstetrics and gynaecology. The CTRC represents trials activity in distinct clinical areas - cancer, medicines for children, epilepsy, dental science, obstetrics and gynaecology. The standards set for UKCRC Clinical Trials Unit Registration were very high and demonstrable evidence that a Unit fulfilled the criteria for all the key compe-tencies was considered essential. 26 units were given full regis-tration with a further 14 units given provisional registration. The Director of the CTRC, Professor Paula Williamson said: "I believe Liverpool is extremely well-placed with this initiative to contribute to significant improvements in health." A CTRC website is due to be launched over the next few weeks.
