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Seed investment from Nottingham BRC has brought a £500,000-plus study into how cystic fibrosis patients digest food to researchers in Nottingham.

The study - GIFT-CF 3 – is being conducted at the Sir Peter Mansfield Imaging Centre. It uses MRI to investigate how a combination of three drugs (elexacaftor, tezacaftor and ivacaftor) may improve bowel function in some CF patients, and whether this relieves bowel symptoms and improves how they absorb nutrition from food.

CF is usually associated with mucus causing lung problems, but the same mucus can affect the gut - over 90pc of CF patients need medication to help digestion, and some still get blockages.

"We know that Kaftrio improves lung function for the majority of CF patients, and anecdotally it seems to help digestion as well," said study co-chief investigator Dr Giles Major, associate clinical professor at the University of Nottingham. "Using MRI means we can see what's going in greater detail, and it's far less invasive for the patients than traditional tests of the bowel."

The treatment was approved for UK use in August so researchers had a short time-window to benchmark patients before they began taking the drugs. The team had to respond rapidly to make sure the research could be done safely through the Covid-19 precautions, working 7 days per week so that no patient’s treatment was delayed. All 23 patients recruited have now started treatment and will be assessed again in 2021.

The £534,950 grant from Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which makes the drug combination, runs for 18 months, and the cross-disciplinary team underlines Nottingham BRC's commitment to MRI techniques underpinning all its research areas.

The team is led by Alan Smyth, Professor of Child Health, and includes Dr Christabella Ng and Dr Helen Barr (Respiratory), Prof Luca Marciani and Prof Robin Spiller (Gastrointestinal), and Prof Penny Gowland, Dr Caroline Hoad and Dr Neele Dellschaft from the University’s Precision Imaging Beacon.

The funding was granted after the team used an initial £15,000 from Nottingham BRC's Innovation Fund to show their techniques would work.

BRC director Prof Ian Hall said: "This really shows how how a comparatively small amount of money properly targeted, at the right moment, can make a huge difference - it's exactly why we set up the Innovation Fund. We're able to make the most of opportunities when we see them because we understand how we can combine the expertise of our researchers and facilities."