Dear DeLIVER Research Teams and PIs,
We hope you have all had a lovely summer and managed to take a break – happy new academic year to all.
Work has continued on the DeLIVER programme unabated. We’ve been busy identifying samples for analysis, and we hugely appreciate the ongoing recruitment and follow up visits to the PEARL and SELINA studies.
Just a brief update to kick off the new term (and some data recruitment graphs below that I know you all enjoy😊)
The Pearl study
Sites involved = 43
Recruitment = 1892
Follow up visits = 501
HCC Diagnoses = 40, here’s our usual reminder to please continue checking your MDT lists with the aim of capturing all HCC diagnoses - this remains an absolute study priority.
Pearl Minor Amendment 8 (15th July 2024) should now have been approved and implemented at all sites, please ensure you are using v5 of the protocol. This amendment extended the recruitment end date of the study to 30th April 2025. Please continue your fantastic recruitment efforts, we are nearly two thirds of the way to our overall target.
The Selina study
Sites involved = 16
Recruitment = 197
Follow up visits = 71, including 11 face-to-face
Selina Substantial Amendment 3 (11th June 24) has been approved by the REC/HRA and details will have been sent out to participating sites. This amendment relaxes the eligibility criteria for patients without cirrhosis by removing the tumour size restriction.
We have also clarified the timing of the face-to-face follow up - the first follow up visit can occur any time after at least 12 months have passed since the baseline visit.
We’re sure you’re all aware that we are collecting many sample aliquots across the two studies - we estimate there will be over 200,000 in total! While this is fantastic for our analysis, it does mean that our freezers fill up almost as soon as we order a new one and we are in a constant hunt for space in order to batch ship samples to Oxford.
Thank you to everyone who has recently requested a shipment which we’ve asked to be delayed. Your patience is much appreciated while we order a new freezer or beg, steal and borrow space in an existing one. We’ll be in touch as soon as we can resume shipments.
Finally, our next catch-up call with the DeLIVER sites is tomorrow Friday 6th at 12pm. All should have received an invite to this – but if not/lost please drop Jennie Benselin a line - we hope to see many of you there.
Kind regards and thanks so much as always for all the hard work.
Ellie, Jenni, Emily, and James