Boosting recruitment rates appeals to pharma companies, which, faced with the imminent patent cliff and cost-cutting, cannot afford delays in the drug development process.
To meet this demand contract research organisations (CRO) are turning to emerging markets. PRA is continuing this trend by entering into a partnership with Oncopartners, a Latin American oncology development company, and IBPC, a non-profit oncology research network.
IBPC’s network is comprised of Brazil’s largest public oncology hospitals. These treat an estimated 140,000 new incidences of cancer a year, giving PRA access to a large patient pool.
Oncopartners has worked previously with IBPC, building close relationships with member sites, investigators and research staff. PRA, and its sponsors, will now benefit from this established relationship by gaining access to the sites, expertise and patient pool.
Furthermore, PRA believes that it can make further cuts to developmental timelines by aligning its operational processes with Oncopartners. Establishing a close relationship between the three partners will potentially help streamline processes.
For example, PRA believes that centralised management of ethics committees, regulatory dossiers, study budget and contract management will accelerate study start-up.
This will be followed by rapid patient recruitment with high protocol compliance and data quality, according to PRA, and the trial will be conducted by “an internationally recognised team of medical and clinical oncology experts”.
PRA and its partners have already begun this process, initiating start-up activities on two collaborative studies.
The partnership between PRA and Oncopartners also covers exclusive co-promotion and co-marketing of outsourced global oncology trials in the pre-award phase.