On Wednesday 21 October, St Bartholomew’s Hospital welcomed James Frith MP, Minister for Health Innovation, alongside Professor Lucy Chappell, Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health and Social Care and Chief Executive of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
He was there as the Government hit ambitious targets to speed up clinical trials, with delivery times slashed by 35%. This will mean patients can benefit from quicker access to treatments for cancer, heart disease and other serious conditions.
What are clinical trials and why are they important?
Clinical trials test out how effective medical, surgical or behavioural interventions are on patients. If they are found to be safe and effective, this can result in developing new treatments, improving patient care and discovering more effective ways to prevent and diagnose disease.
But making these advances possible requires investment in the infrastructure, facilities and expertise needed to deliver research.
Across East London, Barts Charity is working with Barts Health NHS Trust and Queen Mary University of London to make this possible, helping more patients access innovative treatments, and ensuring our diverse communities are better represented in research.
The Royal London Hospital, where the new Clinical Research Facility will be
Creating new opportunities for clinical trials
At The Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, a new Clinical Research Facility is being developed thanks to a £14m investment from Barts Charity, alongside generous philanthropic support.
When this new facility opens, it will significantly expand the capacity of Barts Health and Queen Mary to undertake early-phase clinical trials. It will be five times the size of existing facilities, providing specialist clinical spaces, laboratories and the infrastructure needed to undertake more complex research.
For patients in East London, this could mean earlier access to innovative treatments that might otherwise be unavailable locally.
Importantly, it will also help researchers undertake more studies involving people from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds, ensuring discoveries better reflect all the communities that new treatments are intended to benefit. This will be done by:
- Recruiting a diverse workforce that reflects the communities they serve. This team will then build trust too increase the numbers of local patients taking part in trials, and ensuring studies are accessible and mindful of implicit bias
- Developing a Community Advisory Group, made up of 12 members of the local community, to help guide the Clinical Research Facility’s strategy
By creating the infrastructure needed for more ambitious and inclusive clinical research, the facility has the potential to accelerate discoveries that could improve healthcare across the UK and beyond.
Supporting the clinical trials that could transform healthcare
Alongside investing in physical spaces, Barts Charity is supporting the expertise needed to design and deliver high-quality clinical trials.
Through a £3.1m investment in the Barts Clinical Trials Unit at Queen Mary, we’re helping researchers develop and deliver studies that could transform the way diseases are diagnosed and treated.
Since 2022, the unit’s core team has supported 33 studies, providing specialist expertise in trial design, statistics and research delivery. This includes involvement in TRANSFORM, a major £42m research programme investigating the most effective approaches to prostate cancer screening.
By supporting the teams behind clinical trials, Barts Charity is helping researchers turn promising ideas into rigorous studies, attract further research investment and generate the evidence needed to improve care.
Staff celebrating the opening of the Newham Clinical Trials Pharmacy
Bringing clinical trials closer to communities
Making clinical research more accessible is particularly important in East London, where people can face barriers to taking part in trials, including the need to travel to specialist centres.
At Newham Hospital, a new Clinical Trials Pharmacy opened in April 2026, supported by Barts Charity, NIHR and NHS England.
The dedicated facility provides specialist storage and preparation facilities for medicines used in clinical trials, helping more studies take place directly at Newham Hospital.
Previously, patients in Newham often needed to travel to other hospitals to access certain research opportunities. By building the infrastructure needed to deliver trials locally, more patients will benefit from innovative treatments closer to home.
The pharmacy forms part of wider efforts to expand research capacity at Newham Hospital and ensure local communities have greater opportunities to participate in clinical research.
A mammogram at the new Breast Cancer Centre
Transforming the future of breast cancer care
The ambition to bring research and clinical care closer together is also at the heart of the new Breast Cancer Centre at St Bartholomew’s Hospital.
Made possible through a £16.6m investment from Barts Charity, the centre brings together specialist treatment, research and patient voices to improve breast cancer care in East London and beyond.
Women in East London experience some of the lowest five- and ten-year breast cancer survival rates in the country. Yet many communities remain underrepresented in the research that shapes how breast cancer is diagnosed and treated.
The Breast Cancer Centre aims to address these challenges by embedding research alongside everyday clinical care, creating opportunities for clinicians and researchers to collaborate, accelerate discoveries and help more patients participate in clinical trials.
Patient Jess, who is participating in a clinical trial at St Bartholomew's Hospital
For patients like Jess, who was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer at the age of 37, access to clinical trials can make a significant difference. After being offered an innovative treatment through a clinical trial at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, a halfway scan showed her tumour had an almost complete response.
Her experience highlights the potential of clinical trials to offer patients new treatment options, and why creating more opportunities to participate in research is so important.
By bringing treatment and research together, the Breast Cancer Centre aims to make clinical trials a more integrated part of patient care, helping discoveries reach patients sooner and ensuring more people can benefit from advances in medicine.
Investing in the future of healthcare
From developing world-class research facilities to supporting specialist teams and bringing clinical trials closer to local communities, Barts Charity is helping to build the foundations for the next generation of medical discoveries.
These investments reflect our commitment to backing the people and ideas that could transform healthcare, not just for patients in East London, but across the country and beyond.