Splash Clinical, COG team to speed up recruitment in CNS studies
US patient recruitment firm Splash Clinical has teamed up with UK-based digital brain health services provider Cambridge Cognition (COG) to help sponsors find people to participate in central nervous system (CNS)-focused drug trials.
The new partnership – financial terms of which were not disclosed – will see Splash utilize COG’s pre-screening technology to assess potential participants for studies focusing on CNS indications.
In a press statement, Splash CEO Matt Teuteberg, said, “By integrating their assessment tools into our platform, we will increase our efficiency in finding the right patients for clinical trials. This partnership will save time and resources for our clients and ultimately make treatments available for patients faster.”
CNS recruitment
Finding the right patients to take part in drug research is always difficult, nonetheless of the disease involved. Recruiting for trials focusing on neurological disorders is a particular challenge.
For example, a 2023 study in the journal Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience suggested the lack of information about CNS patients combined with the nature of the diseases themselves are the issue.
“In contrast to other therapeutic areas, such as oncology or cardiovascular diseases, there are no large clinical research networks for CNS, making it more difficult to efficiently reach patients in their care setting. There are also challenges associated with CNS disorders themselves that are not relevant to other therapeutic areas … Thus, the timely recruitment and retention of the right and representative patients is a challenge for CNS clinical trials.”
COG’s technology is designed to address such difficulties. The system consists of an online cognitive assessment portal that gathers and processes data from potential study participants. According to the firm, the assessment, which takes around ten minutes, reduces screening failures and increases the quality of patients entering the trial.
Splash said that, in combination with its own suite or recruitment tools, the new tech will help it reach a broader population while maintaining high-quality standards.
Liam Kaufman, Cambridge Cognition’s vice president of clinical sciences, emphasized the potential benefits of the collaboration, explaining “They’ve got a great recruitment platform and a solid track record in recruitment. Our tools complement their process perfectly. Our goal is to make it easier for researchers to find the right participants for their CNS trials. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.”
She added that during a pilot collaboration completed last year, COG’s software helped filter in hard-to-find patients with early Alzheimer’s symptoms.
News of the collaboration comes a few months after the Michael J. Fox Foundation began using COG’s technology to identify the cognitive profile of Parkinson’s Disease patients as part of an effort to identify biomarkers – and potential druggable targets – for the condition.
Unsplash/Anton Jansson