The RECOVERY Trial team have won a National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR) Impact Prize in the ‘established investigator’ category.
The RECOVERY Trial, which has just recruited its 50,000th participant, was set up with support from the NIHR Oxford Biomedical Research Centre in March 2020 during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to identify drug therapies to treat people hospitalised with severe COVID-19.
Their work uncovered four treatments that reduce the risk of death from COVID-19, one of which was dexamethasone, which was estimated to have saved around one million lives worldwide by March 2021.
The Impact Prizes were launched this year to celebrate researchers and teams who have had a major impact on the health and wealth of the nation, as well as globally. Five prizes were awarded to research teams or individuals, and five to early-career researchers.
Sir Martin Landray, Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology at Oxford Population Health, former Oxford BRC Theme Lead for Clinical Informatics and Big Data and Joint Chief Investigator for the RECOVERY Trial, said: “We are honoured to receive this prize which recognises the contribution of everyone involved – the team at the Oxford Coordinating Centre, the hospital staff who worked tirelessly in the most exceptional circumstances, our funders and partners and, most importantly, the 50,000 trial participants.
“We set up the trial in nine days and had our first results within three months by focusing on the things that mattered – a streamlined trial design that could be easily integrated into hospital care and a single primary outcome – mortality within 28 days. This enabled us to deliver the first breakthrough in the COVID-19 response – the finding that dexamethasone saves the lives of seriously ill patients.”
Sir Peter Horby, Moh Family Foundation Professor of Emerging Infectious Diseases at the University of Oxford’s Pandemic Sciences Institute, and Joint Chief Investigator for the RECOVERY Trial, added: “We recruited our first participants just over five years ago, on 19 March 2020, so this award is a timely reminder that research created the vaccines and treatments that were our saviour. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to find out which treatments worked and which did not, saving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives.
“Continued investment in research is critical for ensuring we have the knowledge and tools ready for the next pandemic. RECOVERY is now testing treatments for flu and community acquired pneumonia, but much more work is needed to make sure that the world is ready to respond at pace to future pandemic threats.”
The Impact Prize winners were announced at a ceremony in Birmingham on 20 March, hosted by Professor Lucy Chappell, the Department of Health and Social Care’s Chief Scientific Advisor and CEO of the NIHR.
She said: “I am delighted to announce the first winners of these prizes. These teams showcase the exceptional work across the range of research that NIHR funds and supports. Collectively, this incredible group of researchers – and many more across the system – have strived to drive meaningful change and used research to make a real difference to people’s lives, help build a health and care service fit for the future and drive growth.”
The 10 winners were chosen from 136 applications. The judging panel described RECOVERY as “one of the most well-known studies supported by the NIHR with clear national and global impact.”
Dr Raha West, a local principal investigator at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust during the pandemic, represented the RECOVERY Trial team at the award ceremony.
She said: “For us, the RECOVERY Trial was the beginning of COVID – we were faced with a lot of difficulties, especially in the first period of the pandemic, where we had no treatment for it and people were dying.
“We started off small, with just me and a research nurse, and then I thought, I have to think outside the box to make this a success so I built an army out of every corner of the hospital, medical students, junior doctors, CEO, porters, so everybody was included. I’m very grateful for the recognition, but I think the main thing for us was to stop people from dying – that’s the main impact for me.”