The NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility (CRF) is a partnership between the University of Exeter Medical School and the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. It is dedicated to facilitating clinical and translational research.
Research Facilities and Technologies
Exeter Clinical Trials Unit (ExeCTU) is based within the College of Medicine and Health at the University of Exeter.
Exeter Clinical Trials Unit (ExeCTU) works in partnership with NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility (CRF) to provide a seamless service to design, manage and deliver clinical research and healthcare studies. Exeter Clinical Trials Unit (ExeCTU) is working towards becoming a UKCRC registered CTU in the near future.
ExeCTU is a leading academic clinical trials unit, registered with the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Clinical Trials Unit Network (Registration Number 65). ExeCTU collaborates with ambitious researchers and clinicians on the design and delivery of high-quality and efficient multi-centre clinical trials and other well-designed studies, addressing important health questions to improve clinical and healthcare practice.
ExeCTU has experts in health economics, process evaluation and qualitative research within the team and collaborates with other expert methodologists at the University of Exeter and beyond. ExeCTU works closely with the NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility (CRF), the NIHR Research Design Service (RDS) South West, the NIHR Clinical Research Network (CRN) South West Peninsula and other partners locally, nationally and internationally.
The research groups that use the ExeCTU are:
For more information visit the Exeter Clinical Trials Unit (ExeCTU) website.
Our Medical Imaging facilities are based in a brand-new, purpose-built facility at the St Luke’s Campus, which underwent a £10.5 million redevelopment to create new state-of-the-art teaching and research space.
The suite offer access to a purpose-built X-ray room, laboratory space and demonstration room.
This space has new X-ray equipment with:
- digital radiography
- ultrasound scanner
- interactive whiteboards for demonstrating anatomy and projecting images
- shareware computer program for students to practice positioning and outcomes of adjusting positions
- table top X-ray experiments demonstration Computed Tomography
- access to the MRI scanner
- phantoms such as anthropomorphic whole body X-ray phantom and Doppler ultrasound string phantom
- quality assurance tests
- barracuda dosemeter
- bones and anatomical models
The research groups that use the MRI Imaging Suite are:
Our facilities include three fully-equipped cell culture suites, laboratories for biochemistry and molecular biology, that include a BD FACSAria™ III Sorter, a BD Accuri C6 flow cytometer, a fluidigm single cell autopreparation system, next generation DNA & RNA sequencing platforms, Pherastar plate reader, NanoSight analyser, and an Agilent Seahorse XF analyser.
Digital Pathology
We also have a new state-of-the-art imaging suite (containing fluorescence, confocal and wide-field microscopes) and quantitative HALO3.1 Pathology analysis platforms (Indica® Labs). Importantly, as part of the E3 award we have also purchased a Vectra® Polaris™ Automated Quantitative Pathology Imaging System with integrated inForm® and Phenoptics™ analysis packages. This allows us to perform multispectral imaging and automated slide scanning to better visualize, analyse, quantify, and phenotype cells in FFPE tissue sections.
The research groups that use RILD Molecular Biology Resources are:
The Exeter Sequencing Service at the University of Exeter is a core facility providing state-of-the-art genomics and bioinformatics analysis. We specialise in providing a bespoke service to researchers in academia and industry.
The Exeter Sequencing Service uses Illumina Sequencing, Pacific Biosciences Sequencing, and Oxford Nanopore Sequencing.
The research groups that use the Exeter Sequencing Service are:
NIHR Exeter Clinical Research Facility (CRF) is a partnership between the University of Exeter Medical School and the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. It is dedicated to facilitating clinical and translational research.
Since 2014, the CRF has been embedded within the RILD Building where it works syngeristically with Exeter Clinical Trials Unit (ExeCTU) and the Wellcome Wolfson Centre for Medical Research to deliver high quality clinical and medical research.
The NIHR Exeter CRF supports and conducts clinical research studies and is based in a purpose-built unit within the Research Innovation Learning & Development (RILD) Building at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. It has highly trained ‘research dedicated’ nurses, scientists, doctors and support staff. Our outstanding research facilities include bespoke wards and consulting rooms, sample handling laboratories and specialist equipment for investigating exercise, physiology and metabolism.
The NIHR Exeter CRF aims to improve patient care by increasing understanding of the causes of disease and improving diagnosis and treatment. Its collaborative and centralised approach maximises efficiency, minimises bureaucracy and ensures the patient voice is central in clinical research.
The NIHR Exeter CRF is highly successful, with outstanding patient recruitment and external research funding. Our research has been published in the top journals, and has changed NHS practice across the world and received national and international awards and recognition.
Key Objectives
• To improve and increase the use of the present excellent infra-structure that supports patient-orientated research
• To support new and established investigators in Exeter in developing and running clinical research
• To increase external studies by active engagement with other CRFs, external investigators and industry
The research groups that use the CRF are:
Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Biostatistics in diabetes
Tel: 01392 408181
Email: crf@exeter.ac.uk
We have two linux-based servers dedicated to diabetes research. These servers each have four 24-core processors and 1.5TB RAM and are connected to a total of 4PB of storage space. These servers are used for a range of analyses from genome sequencing to pancreas imaging.
We also use the High Performance Cluster, ISCA, for advanced computing requirements. ISCA combines a traditional HPC cluster, with a virtualised cluster environment. This in turn provides a range of node types within a single machine.
ISCA is available free of charge to all research groups across the university, and consists of a range of computer resources: the traditional cluster (128 GB nodes) is complimented by two large memory (3 TB) nodes, Xeon Phi accelerator nodes and GPU (Tesla K80) compute nodes. The non-traditional element of Isca includes a cluster of higher memory nodes (256 GB), 3 TB nodes, and an Openstack environment for the management of virtualised resources. The medical school has access to a dedicated 96 nodes and 400TB of space funded through an MRC grant to provide computing for long read sequencing analyses. For further information on ISCA please email the ISCA team.
The research groups that use the HPC are:
Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Biostatistics in diabetes