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Prof. Lorraine O’Driscoll to lead the €4 million All-Ireland Cancer Liquid Biopsies Consortium (CLuB) Emerging Hub of Excellence

Lorraine O’Driscoll FTCD FRSB MRIA, Professor of Pharmacology and Biomedicine in our School and Research Lead for Trinity St James's Cancer Institute, is recipient of a €4 million award to lead the All-Ireland Cancer Liquid Biopsies Consortium (CLuB).

Prof. Lorraine O'Driscoll, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris

The All-Ireland Cancer Liquid Biopsies Consortium (CLuB) emerging hub of excellence is a collaboration between TCD, QUB and NUIG. CLuB will focus on identifying and developing minimally invasive, cost effective, blood tests to complement or -where possible- replace surgical biopsies for cancer diagnosis and optimal treatment selection. It will also use excised tumours as “avatars”, to test the optimal drug treatment regime for a given patient. CLuB aims to develop a critical mass of scientists, clinicians, nurses, technicians, bioinformaticians/biostatisticians, and patents advocates for success during this 4-year program and to achieve momentum and expansion for sustainability. CLuB’s alignment with Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan and United Nationals Sustainable Development Goals should help ensure that its patient-centred cancer liquid biopsy research delivers societal and economic impact.

Prof. O’Driscoll is also TCD’s Principal Investigator on a €4 million “partnerships of scale” entitled the All-Island cancer Research Initiative (AICRI)Start, led by UCD.  AICRIStart brings 10 scientists and clinicians from UCD, TCD, RCSI, DCU, TUD, NUIG, UL, UCC, QUB, UU together to collaborate on cancer research.

On Wednesday 2nd March, the Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris, came to Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute, visiting our School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences laboratories on Level 6, to announce the successful collaborative research projects between academics and institutions in Ireland and in Northern Ireland selected for funding under the North-South Research Programme of the Government’s Shared Island Fund. The awards range in value from €200K to €4 million made to collaborators under three strands: bilateral researcher-researcher projects (€200K); emerging hubs of excellence (€4Mi); and partnerships of scale (€4Mi).


Further information on the Government’s announcement can be found here.