This is the third installment of our look at the increasingly high placebo response that is plaguing clinical trials in analgesia and psychiatry. Additional posts in the series can be accessed here. Solutions to the placebo problem require an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Broadly, research on contributors to the placebo response falls into two...
When you’re looking into conducting a natural history study, you’ve got two things to consider up front: the premise that underlies all of these studies, and which of several types suits your purpose. We tackled these and other topics in our last rare disease webinar. Natural History vs. Registry Studies in Rare Disease considers a...
This is Part Two of our series on the increasingly high placebo response that is plaguing clinical trials in analgesia and psychiatry. Read the other parts here. Analgesic and psychiatric drug development is facing an enormous problem: rising placebo responses in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) threaten the ability of pharmaceutical companies to successfully identify novel...
In 1978 the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research issued the Belmont Report, which has since become a pivotal document in medical research ethics. This report pointed to three unifying ethical principles that must be followed in clinical research: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice, which are considered fundamental for...
For hundreds of years, the medical community has known that the mere act of receiving treatment, even if it’s just a sugar pill, can improve a patient’s symptoms. Therefore, in order to ensure that the effects of an experimental treatment are real, most randomized controlled trials (RCTs) include a placebo arm. Placebos are most often...
Adaptive design is a type of clinical trial methodology that incorporates prospectively planned opportunities for modification of one or more aspects of a study’s design or its hypotheses based on interim analysis of study data. Explicitly planning these pre-specified changes helps to maintain scientific integrity while also introducing greater flexibility in the clinical research environment. The major...
DURHAM, N.C., JULY 18, 2017 — Premier Research has named Susan Romberg Senior Vice President for Clinical Operations. She brings deep industry and therapeutic experience to the role, which oversees global monitoring, clinical management, and document management. Ms. Romberg has worked in the contract research and pharma industries for more than 20 years, most recently...
The journey to treating fibromyalgia has taken a sometimes circuitous path. After a burst of activity about a decade ago, the pursuit of new therapies took a years-long pause before reigniting in recent years. In the past five years, we’ve performed 16 fibromyalgia clinical trials (more than any other CRO), and here are some reflections...
Acne — specifically acne vulgaris — is the most common skin disorder in the United States, affecting up to 50 million Americans each year. While many cases are restricted to mild manifestations during one’s teenage years, acne is a highly visible condition that can have a major impact on a patient’s quality of life. It’s a disorder with the potential...
One of the first steps in the development process is to create the target product profile (TPP) that defines the projected marketed product label. The TPP helps rule out any pharmacodynamic effects that are no more beneficial than current therapeutic treatments. Developing a TPP is also an opportunity to evaluate intellectual property and ensure that the product has an...