Member Article

New Institute Champions Future Free From Bowel Disease

This month, St. Mark’s Hospital and the St. Mark’s Hospital Foundation have launched a brand new and revolutionary Institute – St. Mark’s Institute for Bowel Disease – whose purpose is to work towards a future free from the fear of bowel disease. This new Institute will combine world-leading research, education and dissemination of clinical expertise to offer a bright outlook for people across the whole spectrum of conditions from early and late-stage bowel cancer to inflammatory disease.

Bowel disease is one of the most significant problems in world health. Bowel cancer is the second –leading cause of cancer deaths in Western countries, claiming the lives of 622,000 people worldwide each year. Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), the collective term for Crohn’s disease, Ulcerative Colitis and other conditions, has devastating consequences for the health of 300,000 people in the UK – many of them young – and affects 5 million people globally.

The new St. Mark’s Institute for Bowel Disease will build on St. Mark’s global leadership in its areas of specialisation by aggregating resources to achieve critical scale in a number of strategic research areas. The St. Mark’s Institute for Bowel Disease will initially house six Research Centres, each focusing on one aspect of bowel disease, bringing together all of the research resources, equipment and skills required to make rapid progress:

1. Centre for the Development of Minimally Invasive Surgery – Focused on the development of new surgical procedures, equipment and skills to be able to remove far smaller amounts of the bowel than is currently possible in order to excise diseased tissue and save lives.

2. Centre for the Treatment of Advanced Cancer – Looking into new and innovative treatments for people with advanced cancer who would otherwise have limited hopes of cure and who might otherwise receive only palliative care.

3. Centre for Anorectal Research - For research into regenerative medicine and advanced imaging to be able to more effectively treat anorectal disease while avoiding harmful side effects such as incontinence and diarrhoea.

4. Centre for the Treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Bowel Rehabilitation – Combining surgery, medicine, physical and psychological therapies in order to pioneer new approaches to treating or managing IBD.

5. Centre for Early Diagnosis of Colorectal Disease – Researching the use of new, advanced imaging technology, as well as developing a training and accreditation programme that aims to raise the skills and accuracy of diagnosticians and so save more lives annually, both in the UK and worldwide.

6. Centre for Patient Safety and Quality in Bowel Medicine - Analysing outcomes from different treatments and populations across the globe, in order to identify best practice and develop the ability to personalise medical and surgical plans for patients with different characteristics and circumstances.

St. Mark’s Hospital is the world’s oldest specialist hospital in the area of bowel surgery and medicine, with a long track record of translational research and clinical innovation resulting in new medical and nursing treatments. These include restorative proctocolectomy (an operation removing all the large bowel but avoiding a permanent stoma) which has been performed on over 24,000 patients worldwide with ulcerative colitis; the first description of Crohn’s disease in the colon; identification of the location of the gene which causes familial adenomatous polyposis (FAP) and its resulting bowel cancers (St Mark’s had the first FAP registry in the world and now remains the largest FAP registry outside the US). More recently, a team at St Mark’s pioneered an operation (FLEX procedure) that will replace major surgery for benign polyps and we hope in the longer term, early stage bowel cancer.

St Mark’s Hospital Foundation is a charitable company limited by guarantee, dedicated to raising funds to support research and teaching at St Mark’s Hospital. The board of trustees of the Foundation have agreed unanimously to support the launch of the new Institute, and are committed to raising funds for each of its Research Centres. It is expected that establishing the new Institute and funding the first six centres will require raising around £15m over the coming five years. In due course a physical home for the Institute will be built on the Northwick Park Hospital campus, co-located with St Mark’s Hospital, for which a dedicated fund-raising appeal is likely to be launched at a later date.

The creation of the St. Mark’s Institute is the initiative of a highly committed team of medical and non-medical experts working in partnership with leading fund-raising professionals, dedicated to making the vision of improved bowel health a reality.

Speaking about the launch, Clinical Director of St Mark’s, Professor Robin Phillips MB BS MS FRCS, said: “Bowel disease and bowel cancer are serious illnesses that cause suffering for millions of people globally. The launch of the St Mark’s Institute for Bowel Disease today will help keep St Mark’s medical, surgical and nursing specialists at the cutting edge of research and innovation, and it will help ensure our research is translated into world-leading clinical solutions for the benefit of patients around the world.“

Dean of the St Mark’s Academic Institute Professor Sue Clark MA MB BChir MD FRCS said: “Over the years, researchers at St Mark’s have been responsible for countless breakthroughs which have translated into improved outcomes for millions of patients worldwide. But we don’t just do research, we also run a number of course days each year, disseminating our knowledge to doctors, nurses and technicians who come here from around the world. The launch of the Institute today should help us to move further and faster in this vital work.“

Chairman of St. Mark’s Hospital Foundation Michael Liebreich said: “The trustees of the St Mark’s Hospital Foundation and I are delighted to support this incredibly significant initiative. The doctors and researchers at St Mark’s have a long track record of pioneering innovation, and the formation of the Institute should move us significantly along the way to a future free of bowel disease – and to a future free of the debilitating fear of bowel disease, which is suffered by so many.“

For more information about St Marks, visit: http://www.stmarkshospital.nhs.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by George May .