Science 37 and Foundation Medicine have partnered to help drug developers accelerate enrolment in decentralized clinical trials.
The partnership – financial details of which were not provided – will leverage Foundation Medicine’s patient identification systems to identify patients who may be eligible for a trial based on results from its tissue and blood-based genomic profiling.
Once identified the patient will be enrolled in appropriate studies by Science 37.
And such support is needed according to California-based services firm, which cited data revealing that more than 80 percent of clinical studies globally fail to enroll patients within the sponsor’s desired timeline.
“Many advanced cancer patients are unable to travel to or visit in-person clinical trials sites, so it’s critical that we work across the ecosystem towards new and innovative solutions to improve access to clinical trials regardless of a patient’s location,” said Jonathan Cotliar, chief medical officer at Science 37.
“Combining our operating system with Foundation Medicine’s precision oncology expertise sets us on an exciting path with the goal of accelerating treatment discovery while bringing the research directly to patients.”
This was echoed by Foundation Medicine CEO Brian Alexander, who said “Through this partnership with Science 37, leveraging our combined assets and expertise, our goal is to improve access to clinical trials for patients who aren’t frequently able to participate.
“As we explore this decentralized approach to research, we hope to continue innovating on this model for other clinical programs in the future. Ideally, we’ll create a learning system where physicians and patients have more options, and their experiences help inform treatment for patients in the future.”
Decentralized trials
The focus on decentralized trials is in keeping with comments Science 37 made earlier this year when it announced its intention to go public.
Science 37 claims to have conducted more than 95 decentralized trials and engaged more than 366,000 patients since it was founded in 2014
At the time, CEO David Coman said, “The clinical research industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation in which traditional development methods are being supplanted by technology fueled innovation.
“Our clinical trial Operating System (OS) can enable significantly faster enrolment, retain patients at a meaningfully higher rate, and achieve higher enrolment among diverse patient populations.”
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