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Califf comments on drug makers in joint effort to streamline clinical trials
This week, the New York Times reported that ten of the world's
largest pharmaceutical companies said that they would cooperate on
research aimed at accelerating drug development, starting with
streamlining clinical trials.
Pharmaceutical companies have
collaborated before on areas considered not directly competitive, like
finding variants in the human genome and biomarkers to predict disease
and the effectiveness of drugs. But the people behind the new effort
said it would be the largest of its kind. Read more...
New Executive Committee named to CTTI
The Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) has named a 14-member Executive Committee, resetting CTTI's strategic direction, and ensuring that the organization informs and facilitates meaningful improvements to clinical trial design and conduct. "Clinical trials are a critical component of how we develop medical evidence, and they are not meeting the societal need for answers about which strategies and therapies are most effective," said Robert Califf, M.D., co-chair of the CTTI Executive Committee, vice chancellor for clinical and translational research at Duke University Medical Center, and director of the Duke Translational Medicine Institute. "We believe we can improve the system in a major way through focused effort of the entire clinical research community, including patients themselves. The CTTI Executive Committee understands the need to transform clinical trials, as well as how to do so in ways that align the mutual interests of patients, investigators, and companies that develop medical products. Under this new leadership, CTTI will be able to make substantial improvements to the conduct of clinical trials." Read more...
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CTTI receives financial and in-kind support from many groups committed to improving clinical trials. Member
organizations pay an annual fee which supports CTTI infrastructure
expenses and projects. The Executive Committee oversees the use of
these funds. In addition, individuals from many member
organizations, and some non-member organizations, contribute time and
other resources to make CTTI projects successful. The sources of
support for each project can be found on the respective project pages of
the website.
Duke University, as the host of CTTI, has also
received a cooperative agreement from the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (grant U19 FD003800) which provides some support for all
current projects.