In January 2010, OCF awarded a grant of 500,000 euro (Principal Investigator: Professor John Reynolds, St James’s Hospital and Trinity College Dublin) to establish the first Barrett’s registry in the Republic of Ireland.

The main hospital sites participating in this national program are St James, Beaumont, and the Mercy University Hospital, Cork, and it is anticipated that the Mater Hospital, St Vincent’s University Hospital, and St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny, will also begin registering patients in the near future.

The main goal of this registry is to target oesophageal cancer prevention and early diagnosis through registration of at risk patients with a diagnosis of Barrett’s oesophagus. This initiative will enable improved monitoring, standards, surveillance, education, patient information, and collaborative epidemiological and clinical research. Following year 1 of this study, information on over 1000 patients has been collected.

In parallel, a repository of biopsy and blood material is banked from Barrett’s patients with informed consent. This material is used to drive the scientific studies, directed by Dr. Jacintha O’Sullivan at the (TCD) Institute of Molecular Medicine at St. James’s hospital.

The Barrett’s research projects currently are focused on identifying biomarkers important in driving disease progression from Barrett’s Oesophagus to Oesophageal Cancer, and also studying the impact of obesity in driving this progression.