All over the country our members are helping to:
- increase understanding of diseases
- develop new treatments
- make life better for those affected.
Interested in joining us? Please see our Participant Pages for further information or our contact details are at the bottom of this article. We look forward to hearing from you!
Story of a study
At the start of the year Professor Ravi Gupta applied to the BioResource to ask for volunteers to participate in his new research project. The study is looking at people’s responses to the COVID vaccine and how the vaccine protects against new emerging COVID variants.
To date, nearly 200 BioResource members have volunteered to participate in the study. They have provided blood samples every 4 weeks so that their response to the vaccine can be monitored. Initially, recruitment focused on people aged 60 and over and we had an amazing response to invites with people aged over 80 volunteering to take part. Thank you!
Recently, we invited additional people to participate and more than 50 of our members have expressed an interest in participating in just over 2 weeks. Amazing! They will all be enrolled in the study before the end of June and will be followed up at 3, 9 and 12 months following their vaccine.
We are really grateful to everyone who is helping with this and all our studies. You are making a massive contribution to medical research which will help so many people in the long term.
One of our participants, Katherine, says: "With Cambridge being a centre for so many branches of medical science, I welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the work of the NIHR BioResource. I appreciate the chance it gives to obtain an insight into so many fascinating pioneering studies and have enjoyed all those in which I have participated.
"The staff are very friendly and the information provided has been clear and comprehensive. I am particularly pleased to be taking part in the current COVID-19 study, a welcome and constructive use of my time, the results of which will play a very important role in the understanding and treatment of the virus".
Who is Ravi Gupta?
Professor Ravi Gupta has recently been part of a series of articles on researchers working with COVID-19. In September 2020, he was named as one of the 100 Most Influential people by Time. See what he and his team have been up to:
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/tackling-covid-19-professor-ravi-gupta
Several scientific COVID-19 publications from the Gupta’s research group have already been published following the participation of BioResource volunteers. You can find more on these research findings here.
What’s it like to work in the BioResource Recruiting Team?
Sabine, one of our Senior Study Co-ordinators, says: “Since recently joining the BioResource I have been involved in lots of exciting COVID-19 projects, including contacting members to see if they are willing to volunteer to be part of our COVID-19 research studies. The number of people who have responded positively to study invites has been incredible!
“It is brilliant to see the vast amount of people who are willing to be involved in the BioResource and help contribute towards ground-breaking science. The team and I are eternally grateful because their support is vital for research success. As well as this, all the members I have contacted have been so friendly and kind - it makes my day!”
We are dedicating Volunteers’ week to all the plus 200,000 members of the public who have already joined BioResource. Thank you to everyone for being part of this incredible journey to date. If you are not part of the BioResource and would like to be, please contact us. You can call us on 0800 090 2233 or sign up with the recruitment team via email: nbr@bioresource.nihr.ac.uk.
