In conversation with Professor Tom Kirkwood CBE FMedSci

Here, we chat about some of those early years and about the pilot project we funded in 2004 that led to the Newcastle 85+ Study – a population-based longitudinal study examining in unprecedented detail the complex social, biological and medical factors influencing health in the over-85s. We ask Tom what he’s enjoyed about serving first on our Grants and Research Committee and later on the Board of Trustees, and what advice he has for our Early Career Researchers.

How did you first hear about us?

Back in 1991, I was working for the Medical Research Council at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR). In those days, if you worked in a Research Council establishment you were not allowed to apply for external research grants. Happily, this rule was changed at the point when I had an idea for a project on the basic science of ageing. Funding for ageing research was very much in its infancy, but there was a UK charity called Research into Ageing. How RiA worked was to invite applications that were peer reviewed and assessed by a grants committee. They would then seek to fund raise for the top-selected projects from foundations and benefactors. My project was selected, and the director of RiA took it to Kay Glendinning who ran the DMT.

So what happened next?

Although there was a Board of Trustees, Kay had quite a free hand to identify things that she thought the charity should be funding. As I recall, she arrived in some style at the NIMR to interview me about my plans. She didn’t quiz me about the scientific details because our application had already been selected by the RiA grants committee following stringent peer review. She was more interested in the story behind what we were trying to do. In this regard, her manner of selection illustrated the principle that has long distinguished the work of the Vivensa Foundation with its careful consideration of researchers as well as research. Kay must have liked what she heard, because she decided to fund the project.

What happened to your funded project and your grant?

The project, which was funded for three years, got off to a good start at the NIMR. However,  when part way through it, I was offered a position as Professor of Biological Gerontology at the University of Manchester. This was, I believe, the first such position in the UK and it raised exciting possibilities. Happily, I was able to transfer the remainder of the grant and moved to Manchester in 1993. I’m deeply indebted to the Vivensa Foundation for the opportunity to set up that project and take it to Manchester, where things really started to take off. Throughout the process, Kay maintained a supportive interest in our progress.

Photograph: Tom (3rd from the left) with his team at the NIMR c.1992. Credit: MRC News

In 1999 you moved from Manchester to Newcastle. Tell us about that.

While our ageing research group in Manchester was developing well, I learnt that Newcastle University were also building a research institute on ageing with interests complementary to ours. We met and decided that cooperation would suit both universities well. In 1996, the Manchester-Newcastle Joint Centre on Ageing was launched, which I was honoured to direct. My own work meshed particularly well with what was taking shape in Newcastle, and in 1999, I had a very attractive opportunity to move there, while maintaining good links with the group in Manchester. The cross-disciplinary strengths in Newcastle sparked the idea of a population-based study on what life was really like for older people in the UK, an area that was very under-researched. We knew demographically that people above the age of 85 were the fastest growing segment of the population, but deeper knowledge was sparse. It was around this time that the Vivensa Foundation was choosing to focus its resources on ageing, so we put in a funding application for a pilot study.

So the Vivensa Foundation funded the pilot study that was to become the Newcastle 85+ study?

Yes, they funded an 18-month pilot study to see whether we could actually achieve the kind of recruitment we wanted. We had to design a framework and road-test the mechanisms for recruitment and assessment, given that we wanted to target people who were at least 85 years old. Then once we recruited them, we wanted to make as complete an investigation as we possibly could. We wanted to look at the shape they were in, the diseases they may have been diagnosed with, and how markers of the ageing process might be showing up within their systems. We also knew that it would be too burdensome to ask participants into a research centre to be tested. So the decision was made that our research nurses would conduct the assessments in people’s normal places of living.

Was the pilot study a success?

It worked as well as we could possibly have hoped. We discovered that if you approach people in the right way, the recruitment rate was really high. People were generous of their time and willing to undertake health and wellness checks. It provided us with a platform on which to go to the Medical Research Council with a full-scale grant application. We could show that the study was feasible. We were granted the funding – I think the initial 5-year programme grant was for £2.2M – to run the study at a scale we wanted.

Is it true that you ran out of money due to your own recruitment success?

Yes, when we were about half-way into the project we realised we hadn’t budgeted enough for the number of participants we ended up recruiting. Most of the expense was directly proportional to the number of participants. We weren’t expecting a 70% recruitment rate, but the value of the study was greatly enhanced by including such a large number. Furthermore, this was a longitudinal study, with assessments repeated at intervals to see how the participants were faring. The excellence of our research nurse team was such that there were far fewer dropouts than might have been expected. We were faced with a real quandary. Without more funding we would have had to drop the last cycle of assessments; this would have reduced the longitudinal aspect of the study. Understandably, the MRC had a policy not to supplement existing grants, so we had either to cut the study short or get funding from elsewhere. We came back to the Vivensa Foundation and after thorough review, the Research Grants Committee agreed to provide supplementary funding to keep the project going.

The Newcastle 85+ study went on to have considerable impact, didn’t it?

Although the initial funding period was for five years, the study eventually continued for more than 10 years. Data were still being collected up until 2016. The study was very demanding, but also hugely rewarding. It resulted in a very large number of research publications. And it gave possibly the most complete view of what life is like for people aged 85 and beyond. The study had considerable impact internationally.

As an award holder and a Committee/Board member, what do you think the Vivensa Foundation does well?

I place particular value on the more personal ways the Vivensa Foundation works. It supports its award-holders on their pathway into research careers. But it’s not just a matter of providing funding for people to do their work – it’s about actually engaging with them. The Vivensa Foundation is great at picking really important research topics but also at building a sense of community that helps develop the research leaders of tomorrow.

What advice do you have for Early Career Researchers?

I’m always hesitant about assuming that senior researchers like myself should try to shovel advice into Early Career Researchers. A primary function of the senior researcher is to listen and offer advice when asked. When I was supervising PhD students I would tell them the opportunity to do a PhD is a real gift. It gives you three years to focus on a topic of your own choice. You don’t have teaching duties, you don’t have administrative responsibilities, so it really is the chance of a lifetime. But with the highs come some inevitable lows. The answers in research are elusive. There is no guarantee of success. You’ve got to be prepared to feel frustrated and not to be discouraged when things don’t work out. So be aware of the challenges but also be absolutely convinced that it’s one of the best opportunities in life. Not every project is going to change the world, but as a researcher you should be discovering things that people didn’t know before you. There’s a great deal of satisfaction in that.

How do you feel about your time working with the Vivensa Foundation?

I’ve really enjoyed the work. As I said at my last Board meeting, I feel an immense debt of gratitude for the things that have become possible for me in my journey as a researcher in ageing. It’s also been a privilege to be involved in in the evolution of the charity’s funding and to be around when the decision was made to focus solely on ageing. It’s been interesting and very rewarding to be a part of that process.