We collaborate with industry, consortia, and the Respiratory translational research collaboration to use closely-phenotyped ‘trial ready cohorts’ for innovative precision medicine including imaging and biomarkers and provide datalinked biosamples for discovery science. We’re developing methods for early identification of rare and common lung diseases and their complications to improve outcomes.

We host the national centres for lymphangioleiomyomatosis and for cystic lung diseases. We’re committed to patient and public involvement, with active groups for asthma and pneumonia, and trustees in the LAM Action, Asthma UK/British Lung Foundation and James Lind Alliance charities. As part of the BRC, we work through community groups and trade unions to encourage hard-to-reach local communities to participate in research.

We have three sub-themes

• Airways Disease - studying airway remodelling, precision targeting of treatments, and environmental exposures and exacerbations in COPD and asthma.
• Respiratory infection - building on our teams’ national roles and access, we study flu and COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness, and post-COVID-19 and pneumonia recovery at the Nottingham Health Recovery Research Facility, as well co-leading major clinical trials and research into cystic fibrosis, bronchiectasis, and pseudomonas.
• Parenchymal lung disease - studying biomarkers in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, trials in fibrosis, modelling COVID-19 fibrosis outcomes and the epidemiology of rare lung diseases, and repurposing drugs for rare diseases.

We work closely with Nottingham’s world-leading magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) team on investigating chronic conditions such as cystic fibrosis, COPD and their multimorbidities. We lead collaborative work on large datasets and HDRUK bioinformatics.