Centre for Lung Health launched

Leading respiratory academics and clinicians from across London have come together to launch a new centre of excellence focused on lung health.

The centre will be led by Professor Mona Bafadhel, Chair in Respiratory Medicine at King’s College London (KCL) and co-lead of the King’s Health Partners (KHP) Respiratory & Allergy Clinical Academic Group (CAG). The new King’s Centre for Lung Health includes expert academics from KCL, alongside clinicians from Guy’s and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust (NHS FT), incorporating Royal Brompton and Harefield hospitals, and King’s College Hospital NHS FT, as well as KHP staff.

The new centre – whose mission is ‘inspiring better breathing’ – aims to discover new treatments, diagnoses, and drugs to tackle one of the biggest health issues in the world today. 

Lung diseases are the third most common cause of mortality and morbidity in the world and have been highlighted as a priority in the NHS Long Term Plan and by the UK Office of Life Sciences. The launch explored how the Centre and the broader scientific community could play a key role in meeting this priority.

Prof Mona Bafadhel pointed out that there are ten health crises every minute caused by lung disease in the UK, which also has the worst death rate for lung disease anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. “We must not take our lungs for granted,” she said.

Prof Bafadhel said the centre would address some of the great healthcare challenges of our day by developing the best of respiratory research with NHS partners and others. The centre would be able to study some of the largest disease cohorts in the UK and would serve some of the most diverse communities. She added:

This is an inclusive centre to advance global lung health and wellbeing, to be a world class academic centre of Respiratory excellence. Our vision is to promote lung health through the lifetime, by preventing, diagnosing and treating lung disease.

Our mission is really about inspiring better breathing. It is a collaboration of multidisciplinary expertise, that will lead to impact on all of our respiratory patients across the care pathway.

Dr Irem Patel, Consultant Respiratory Physician, King’s College Hospital NHS FT; Joint Clinical Strategy Director, KHP; and Co-lead , KHP Allergy and Respiratory CAG also spoke at the launch:

There is huge momentum across London bringing engaged clinicians across primary, secondary, and community care together to think about how we can improve and deliver on NHS Long Term Plan priorities.

We have a strong network of colleagues and we can leverage a collegiate approach that already exists to serve patient needs.

Let’s ensure that we bring early prevention and early treatment, informed by Biomics and genomics, to those groups and then look after them for the whole life course.

If you would like to get involved in the Centre’s mission to improve lung health you can contact lungcentre@kcl.ac.uk or visit www.kcl.ac.uk/research/centre-for-lung-health