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UK-ICRS
Conference / Workshop 27-28 January 2009
Following on
from the successful meeting in 2006 at Oswestry this event at the Royal
National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore was well attended and had an exciting
programme of international talks from scientists and clinicians on cell
therapies, an update on ACTIVE, trial design, and workshop discussions
on how to proceed with further research into this area. To read more please
download the minutes and a summary
written for the ICRS newsletter.
Protocol
Amendments April '08
Patella lesions
and osteochondral defects can now be treated in the trial (this was the
latest amendment to be approved by ethics - see April '08 edition of the
newsletter for full details) and a protocol
amendment summary shows all the amendments.
April
'08 RNOH, Stanmore have joined ACTIVE
Surgeons at
the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore have joined ACTIVE.
This is a very welcome development and will certainly be a big boost to
recruitment.
Nov '07
MRC agree to extend recruitment period
Following its
review of ACTIVE in November 2007, the MRC has agreed to extend the recruitment
period of ACTIVE up to the end of 2009.
UK-ICRS
conference: Autumn 2008
A UK-ICRS conference
will hopefully be held at Stanmore in the Autumn convened by Prof Dave
Marsh and Mr Tim Briggs. Date yet to be confirmed. Watch this space for
further details.
Protocol
Amendments (March 2007)
Several amendments
have been made including allowing MACI as an option in the ACI arm of
the trial - see Study Documents for summary
and latest protocol.
6th Oswestry
Cartilage Symposium (Nov 2006)
This meeting
was a great success, described by some as "one of the best clinician-scientist
interactions we’d ever experienced".
see programme
and delegate list.
Recruitment,
recruitment, recruitment...
The main focus
at present is patient recruitment - our Norwegian collaborators have done
well in meeting their local recruitment targets. However, some UK centres
are yet to randomise patients and the main difficulty appears to be a
lack of patients that meet the inclusion criteria. We therefore encourage
you all to be as proactive as possible in raising the profile of ACTIVE
and widening referral channels.
If you have an opportunity
to give a local presentation about ACTIVE please let the Trial
Manager know or feel free to use this ACTIVE
Power-point presentation.
Raising
awareness among the general public
The Glasgow
Herald contacted us over Christmas 2005 after hearing about ACI from the
Arthritis Research Campaign - they then published this article: http://ww1.theherald.co.uk/features/53432.shtml
As a result we had lots of queries from patients keen to take part
in the trial. Most of these patients had generalised osteoarthritis and
were therefore not eligible for ACTIVE but it was a helpful way of informing
the general public.
If you are a collaborating
centre why not contact your local newspaper and ask if a similar article
could be published in your area?
ACTIVE is being carried out by the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic & District Hospital NHS Trust in collaboration with the University of Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit and Health Economics Facility. The trial is funded by the Medical Research Council and administrated by Keele University.