Rita Fernandes, Rosaleen Herdman-Grant, Richard Simms and Dr Anna Joseph from the Kingston Hospital Research team have been thanked by GenOMICC’s Chief Investigator Dr Kenneth Baillie, for their “outstanding” personal contributions to the GenOMICC study.
GenOMICC is a global research study that aims to discover specific genes that control the processes that lead to life-threatening illness. Once these processes are understood, there is potential to design effective treatments for infections, including COVID.
Dr Baillie thanked each member of the team personally for their “consistent, fastidious, and diligent contributions to making this study happen” and acknowledged the difficult circumstances faced by the team, who tirelessly continued their screening and recruitment of patients, regardless of the obstacles created by COVID. Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, the team have succeeded in recruiting over 200 patients in the last 18 months, and Kingston Hospital has consistently been placed within the top 10 recruiting sites for the study.
GenOMICC is the largest consented research study in the history of UK critical care medicine, leads the world in genetic discovery in COVID, and has so far found 25 genetic associations with critical illness. It has already informed the selection of drugs in large scale clinical trials and continues to find new insights into the molecular mechanisms of disease. Dr Baillie highlighted his confidence that, with the help of Kingston Hospital’s research team, there is potential to use these insights to combat critical illness syndromes such as sepsis and influenza over the coming years. Congratulations to the team on their efforts and outstanding contribution to this significant international and world renowned research.
