Clinical research news in brief
pharmafile | September 8, 2011 | News story | Research and Development | research and development news
This roundup includes using social media to recruit trial subjects, a strategic level service deal between BMS and Icon, plus updates from Clinilabs, RxGen and Parexel.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US have boosted patient recruitment into clinical trials by tapping into the power of social media. Using a social networking site for patients with rare diseases, the team were able to enrol all 12 patients needed for the trial in spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD) within a week. The authors note that the study is a “successful model for developing a ‘virtual’ multicentre disease registry through disease-specific social media networks”.
Bristol-Myers Squibb and contract research organisation Icon have signed a preferred-provider agreement for early-stage drug development, adding to their mid- to late-stage clinical development agreement which was signed in June 2010. The three-year agreement will see Icon providing full-service pharmacology and exploratory clinical studies for BMS. Icon also has strategic-level agreements in place with Pfizer, Merck Serono Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly.
Clinilabs has been awarded a contract to carry out a phase I clinical trial of a candidate drug for insomnia on behalf of an unnamed sponsor. The study will assess the safety, tolerability, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in a group of healthy, normal subjects and in otherwise healthy subjects who suffer from primary insomnia.
US contract research organisation (CRO) RxGen and partner miRagen Therapeutics have won a US federal contract to research the role of microRNA drugs in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases, including chronic heart failure. Specific miRNAs can be used to switch off the activity of disease-related genes and “provide a new component of disease biology to target for therapeutic intervention”, according to the two companies. The grant is for around $720,000.
Parexel has been named among the five top pharmaceutical outsourcing companies in 2011 by the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP). The CRO shared the honours with IT services company Intelligroup, building efficiency group Johnson Controls, facilities and document management company The Millennium Group and Chinese IT services provider Wicresoft.
Phil Taylor
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