Revolutionising Health Outcomes: The Impact of Barts Life Sciences on Precision Medicine and Global Health

The healthcare research landscape has advanced dramatically in the past decade. Breakthroughs in areas such as genomics now enable us to diagnose and treat diseases with unprecedented precision. In this blog post, we spoke with Professor Sir Mark Caulfield, Vice Principal for Health Queen Mary University of London, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry and Director of the NIHR Barts Biomedical Research Centre, about the groundbreaking research at Barts Life Sciences in North-East London and how it will benefit our diverse local community.

Note the views expressed herein are those solely of the author.

What makes the research at Barts Life Sciences so groundbreaking and significant?

The healthcare research landscape has seen incredible advancements over the past decade, bringing exciting innovations. However, these benefits aren’t yet reaching everyone equally. At Barts Life Sciences, we’re dedicated to changing that.

As an exciting collaboration between Barts Health NHS Trust and Queen Mary University of London, our mission is to harness the potential of life sciences within Whitechapel and extend our impact, creating transformative changes for our patients.

One of our greatest strengths in Whitechapel, and across North-east London, is our richly diverse community. This diversity gives us a unique opportunity to address major unmet healthcare needs. It allows us to conduct research that is truly representative and impactful, tackling the historic lack of representation that has long hindered healthcare research.

Healthcare should lay the foundation for better health outcomes for everyone. Yet, the sad reality is that the benefits are very much skewed. For example, a middle-aged woman living on Whitechapel Road currently has an average healthy life expectancy of just 58 years; while she may live to 82, she will spend 24 of those years in poor health. That can’t be right. In contrast, if she lived in Richmond upon Thames, she would enjoy good health until 72. We have to change that.

By combining the research expertise of Queen Mary and Barts Health, and drawing on the diversity of our local community, home to 2.5 million people from 97 nations, we’re creating a ‘research window on the world.’ This enables us to tackle health issues in Whitechapel that have the potential for global impact, particularly in low-income countries that might not have the resources to conduct such research locally.

Our goal is to make meaningful changes that improve health outcomes for our local community and beyond, regardless of where people live.

The medical research landscape has evolved a lot recently. What are some of the most exciting changes you’ve seen in the past decade?

There are several things that have changed in the last decade or so in healthcare. One is the mobilisation of routinely collected healthcare data for research. This is becoming a major area of investment in the UK, with new plans for secure data environments in England which will coalesce regional data, in our case in London from 8 million people.

For instance, working with the North-East London Integrated Care Board, we analyse 2.5 million GP records annually. Our primary care researchers at the Queen Mary Clinical Effectiveness Group use this data to influence the quality outcomes framework and the performance of the primary care system across North-East London. As a result of our efforts to improve risk factor profiles, we’ve achieved the best control of blood pressure, cholesterol, and kidney disease in the country.

This success is due to our collaboration with General Practitioners and the Integrated Care Board, where we analyse data and intervene directly to improve patient outcomes. It’s estimated that these efforts have saved hundreds of lives across East London and released significant healthcare funds that would otherwise have been spent on complications from unmanaged risk factors.

Our model has since been mirrored in other parts of the country, most notably in South-East London, and is highly valued by the Integrated Care Board and the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

What are some of the most groundbreaking advancements in medical research today?

One of the most exciting areas of research is genomics, which has radically transformed healthcare over the last decade. We can now measure the molecular signature of tumours and use this information to determine the most effective therapy for individual patients.

Additionally, whole genome sequencing allows us to read the 3.3 billion letters that make up our DNA, uncovering susceptibilities to diseases. This technology has enabled us to diagnose 25% of rare disease cases that would have remained undiagnosed only a decade ago.

There are big shifts, but the future is not just about measuring the whole genome; it’s also about exploring other ‘omics,’ such as RNA, proteins, and metabolic signatures. By examining RNA, which is transcribed from DNA and ultimately creates proteins, and evaluating metabolic profiles, we gain a comprehensive understanding of an individual’s genetic makeup and its impact on health.

By combining a comprehensive view of a patient’s genetic information with various types of health data, such as their electronic health records, digital images from radiology (scans and X-rays), and digital pathology (detailed analysis of tissue samples), we can create a much more detailed and precise understanding of that patient’s health. This integrated approach allows for more personalised and effective medical care.

At Barts Life Sciences, one of our ambitions is to integrate this multimodal, multi-omic data, and leverage AI so we can better uncover patterns that are currently invisible to us. These patterns could lead to new ways of stratifying patient care, targeting the right therapy for the right patient, as well as identifying new therapeutic targets or opportunities for device-based innovations.

What exciting developments are planned for the Life Sciences campus in Whitechapel?

At the Life Sciences campus in Whitechapel, we’re planning to build a cutting-edge Precision Healthcare Research Institute. This institute will be the cornerstone of our efforts to advance modern medicine by focusing on how precisely we can deliver healthcare. It will integrate multi-modal health data with multi-omic data to drive the development of next-generation therapies and medical devices, which can be trialled right next door in The Royal London Hospital.

This includes exciting new innovations that can remotely sense how well you are and spot if there’s a problem. For example, watches can now spot Parkinson’s disease, disorders of heart rhythm, send a warning sign to the hospital and an intervention can occur much more quickly.  For people at high risk these surveillance devices may be game changers, and they also keep people out of hospital, reducing bed days and improving care.

We’re also envisioning a 1 million square foot+ facility in partnership with Queen Mary University,Barts Health and various private sector partners. This space will be dedicated to innovation, where we’ll work closely with Tower Hamlets and local communities. Our approach will involve testing and accelerating new innovations, moving them from research to practical applications in hospitals and the community.

The Whitechapel ecosystem is designed to harness the real strengths of academic research, NHS expertise, and industry collaboration. Our goal is to translate these advancements into direct benefits for patients, addressing unmet needs and improving lives in our diverse population.

How does the campus in Whitechapel fit into the broader life sciences ecosystem?

The campus is a key piece in a much larger life sciences puzzle across London and the South East. This region is rapidly becoming a scientific powerhouse, comparable to established hubs like Boston, which boasts 38 million square feet of life sciences space around institutions like Harvard and MIT. While London’s current life sciences estate is smaller, with our 1 million square feet, it represents a significant expansion and an opportunity to substantially grow the size of the sector in the city.

Looking ahead, exciting developments are planned across the region. The Imperial West campus, South London Royal Street, the Knowledge Quarter, and Canary Wharf are all set to contribute to a vibrant and growing life sciences ecosystem. This collective effort has the potential to attract substantial inward investment, which is crucial for the UK right now.

However, we face challenges. Recent data shows a decline in US foreign direct investment in the UK’s life sciences sector, partly due to perceptions of slow market access and Brexit-related complications. To counter this, we must rapidly build a competitive environment with a robust technical workforce and a dynamic life sciences milieu in London and the South-East.

Moreover, other cities like Birmingham and Manchester are also expanding their life sciences capabilities, adding to the national landscape. The key is to act swiftly and strategically to ensure the UK remains a competitive player on the global stage, particularly against other prominent industrial centres in Europe and beyond.

Looking ahead, what do you envision for the future of Barts Life Sciences, and how far can we push the boundaries?

At Barts Life Sciences, we see great potential in our work, especially with our two key locations at Whitechapel and Canary Wharf. Over my 40 years as a doctor, I’ve seen first-hand how investment and development have surged just a mile away in Canary Wharf. All that’s happened is the number of skyscrapers has increased, leaving Whitechapel largely untouched. Despite the area’s vibrant diversity and growing community, there’s still really serious unmet healthcare need.

Our goal is to bridge this gap. By focusing on making the Whitechapel ecosystem thrive, we aim to channel resources and innovations directly into the local community. Historically, investment has flowed east but bypassed Whitechapel. While Canary Wharf has benefited, it hasn’t had the same positive impact on the local community.

By aligning resources with community needs, we hope to turn Whitechapel into a hub of health innovation that benefits everyone. The combination of these two locations holds great potential to address unmet needs and drive significant improvements in public health.

 What excites you most about the future of healthcare research?

Medicine has changed beyond all belief in my lifetime. I was one of the first HIV house officers, in 1985. Back then, treating HIV was a desperate struggle, with few options and grim outcomes. Today, thanks to breakthroughs in treatment, HIV is manageable and not a death sentence as it once was, and people can live full lives.

We’ve also seen incredible progress with Hepatitis C, particularly in communities like the British Bangladeshi and Pakistani populations, where it was often diagnosed too late. Targeted treatments have enabled huge leap forward from when we didn’t even know the virus existed. This has meant dramatic reductions in mortality and the need for liver transplants, and we can now eradicate the virus in 95% of people.

In conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, where patients once faced severe disabilities and deformities, the advent of biologics has been groundbreaking. These treatments target specific inflammatory pathways and can prevent joint damage, drastically improving quality of life. This emphasises just how far the landscape has changed.

At Queen Mary and Barts Health, we’re excited about how advances in precision healthcare are transforming treatment, and are embracing its potential to transform treatment for diseases like cancer and inflammatory disorders. Our mission in Whitechapel is to use our unique research window of 97 nations, to drive these innovations.

By leveraging insights from this diverse global network, we aim to create evidence that supports the adoption of advanced therapies worldwide. This approach helps ensure that high-quality, 21st-century healthcare becomes accessible not only locally but also in countries around the world.

About the author

Professor Sir Mark Caulfield is Professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Queen Mary University of London and the Vice Principal for Health for Queen Mary’s Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry.

Professor Sir Caulfield graduated in Medicine in 1984 from the London Hospital Medical College and trained in Clinical Pharmacology at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, he developed a research programme in molecular genetics of hypertension and translational clinical research.