University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) was today (18 August 2011) awarded more than £6.5 million to continue its cutting edge research into liver disease and liver cancer.

UHB is to share in a record £800 million-worth of new Government funding to boost research and allow the development of ground breaking medicines, treatments and care for patients.

The successful bid for funding was made jointly by the Trust and the neighbouring University of Birmingham.

The money – amounting to £1,312,340 a year over the next five years – will be used for translational research into liver disease.

This research, which is carried out across the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and the university, involves taking cutting edge research from the laboratory bench to the patient’s bedside.

Today’s award, made under the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Unit funding scheme, will enable this research to continue for another five years, from 1 April 2012.

UHB and the University of Birmingham established the joint Biomedical Research Unit in 2008, with a particular focus of the research involving viral hepatitis and other forms of chronic liver disease, and liver cancer.

UHB Chief Executive Julie Moore said: "Our success in securing this funding is testament to the results of our excellent biomedical and translational research teams. It will allow us to build on our existing capacity, which can only benefit our patients and the wider NHS.

“The collaboration between UHB and the University of Birmingham makes us one of the few centres internationally that can complete the full circle of translational medicine. Through this partnership we are able to deliver internationally recognised clinical programmes.”

Bridget Gunson, manager of the Birmingham Biomedical Research Unit, said the facility was a partnership between the Liver Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham and the university’s Centre for Liver Research.

She said: “We are fantastically pleased because this funding will enable us to continue the work we have been doing for the last three and a half years in translational research and early phase clinical trials in liver disease."