Study Design

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

Applied Clinical Trials – Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials: Obstacles and Opportunities

Dementia is a global epidemic, affecting nearly 50 million people worldwide. By 2050, it’s estimated that 115 million people will suffer from some form of dementia. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia occurring late in life. AD is also the only condition among the leading causes of death that cannot currently be...

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

Finding the Fast Track in Early-Phase Oncology Trials

Put yourself in this scenario: Your compound is a newly validated mutated receptor that is present in only a limited number of cancer patients, and there is no approved diagnostic test. Your product, an antibody-like molecule that inhibits the receptor’s activity, also stimulates a potent immune response. Further complicating things, much of the preclinical data...

Consulting

Driving Product Development and Finding the Fast Track in Early-Phase Oncology Programs

Small- to mid-sized biotech and pharma companies face many challenges when planning and executing an early-phase oncology trial, from performing a regulatory gap analysis and developing a target product profile to identifying the right patients and selecting efficacy endpoints. Sponsors of first-in-human trials of novel oncology compounds face significant challenges. Beyond the typical circumstances of limited budget,...

Quality

Operational Challenges of Neuroscience Clinical Trials, Part 4: Assessment Subjectivity

In this blog series, we’ve been discussing some of the challenges of conducting clinical trials in neuroscience. In our final post of the series, we turn to another major one: ensuring that assessments are conducted with high quality whilst also minimizing subjectivity. Rating subjectivity can make signal detection substantially more difficult, if not impossible. This...

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

PM360 – Maximizing the Probability of Trial Success for CAR-T Cell Therapies

CAR-T cells are complex products, and translating them from basic and preclinical research to clinical trials and commercialization can be challenging. Understanding the regulations and developing a protocol that puts safety first—at every stage of development—are important first steps in bringing promising CAR-T cell therapies to the patients who need them most. CAR-T Cell Therapies:...

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

Premier Voices #4: The Placebo Problem Part 2 With Michael Kuss

Measuring, interpreting, and mitigating placebo response is a persistent and growing challenge in analgesia clinical trials. In the conclusion of our Premier Voices podcast series on the placebo problem, Paul Mirek, Marketing Manager, and Michael Kuss, BS, Vice President, Analgesia Product Development, examine experimental trial designs, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and other approaches to managing the...

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

Premier Voices #3: The Placebo Problem Part 1 With Scott Millard

 The placebo effect’s impact on drug development is widely known, but you may be surprised to learn that the word “placebo” has had multiple meanings — all of them pejorative — going back hundreds of years. Scott Millard, Premier Research’s Executive Director for Strategic Development and Analgesia, explores the role of placebos in the...

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

Premier Voices #2: Registry Studies & Natural Histories in Rare Disease Trials w/ Angi Robinson & Juliet Moritz

 Patient registries and natural history studies are vital tools for orphan drug researchers, who often struggle with limited understanding of diseases and sparse data due to small patient numbers. In the second installment of the Premier Voices podcast with Angi Robinson, Vice President, Clinical Development Services, Rare Disease & Pediatrics, and Juliet Moritz, we...

Clinical Research: Phase 1 - Phase 4

Key Considerations When Designing a Phase 1 Oncology Trial

Traditionally, phase 1 oncology trials have relied on a standard 3+3 dose escalation design to achieve the objective of defining a recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D). However, statistical simulations have shown that as few as one in three trials using the 3+3 design succeed in identifying the maximum tolerated dose.[1] Concerns have also been raised...

Study Design

Considerations for the Design and Execution of Medical Device Trials

While clinical trials for medical devices have many similarities to those for pharmaceuticals, the regulatory evaluation of devices is distinct from that of drugs – and there are critical differences in the way the device trials are designed and executed. Here are a few of the key differences: Requirement for a clinical trial When studying...