Thursday, February 19, 2009
ISS/ISE Standardization
Monday, February 16, 2009
Clinical Trials - Collective effort to redefine Recession
Clinical Trials is basically a huge process accompanies by a set of procedures which needs to be followed with utmost precise and perfection. The basic nature of clinical investigations is cost and time involved. This is always a challenge that Clinical Research companies and sponsors face. However due to efficient clinical budgeting, planning and protocol preparation complex situations are avoided.
In the time when everything goes wrong across the globe, in an era that has stamped its impact on every sector across the world, an industry particularly the clinical trials or clinical research industry which is also dependant on many other parameters faces severe pressure. The great old theory of Darwin “Survival of the fittest” comes into play during the tough times.
Though recession has shown signs of frustration among the industry segments, clinical trials industry with its strong foundation and basics never showed any symbols of panic, however with the situation of recession going from bad to worst and with the big research companies predicting the actual worse is yet to come, Are clinical trials industry and companies globally ready to face it? What surviving strategies do the companies need to adopt. This requires a huge collective effort globally to fight it.
The news this hour that Charles River Laboratories reducing the workforce by 3% rings in the bells for others as well. Let’s initiate this collective effort to survive recession and be ready for the good days ahead. Lets join together to redefine the clinical trials destiny by sharing the experiences and strategies to fight recession.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Clinical Trials in India
Almost all the top names in the pharmaceutical world have zeroed-in on India, setting up clinical trail facilities in major cities, especially Hydearbad and Ahmedabad. Global consultancy McKinsey & Co estimates that by 2010, global pharma majors would spend around $1-1.5 billion just for drug trials in the country.
The company's clinical trials are to test if Xigris, which is indicated for reduction of mortality in adult patients, can be used for sepsis. Eli Lilly has already held clinical trials involving more than 600 patients for Human Insulin and Insulin Lispro. It is also these days conducting trials on oncology, and developing a new molecule for lung cancer.
Pfizer
Pfizer is also carrying out clinical trials for drugs to treat osteoporosis, breast cancer and schizophrenia. Pfizer's cumulative investment on clinical research in India is believed to be $13 million.
Roche
India is also being considered a prospective site for Roche's future clinical trials involving new drugs and therapies for treatment of different variants of blood cancer and colorectal diseases.
SIRO Clinpharm
Clinigene International
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Clinical Trials - Future Trends
Clinical Trials - Future Trends
Clinical Trials have been gaining prominence off late. Often Clinical Trials procedures and processes are assumed to be complex due to the structure in practice. However there have been lot of speculation pertaining to these procedures and processes related to clinical trials. This introspection has began along with the time and change in the levels of technology. The detailed level of existing procedures create a complex environment due to its huge way of performing things which calls for the best accuracy and concentration to handle things.
To maintain this accuracy and concentration, a clinical trial needs to depend on huge number of people in the paper based environment. The manual process was always time taking and costly. This confusion as the technology has evolved started having a glimpse to make use of technology and automate certain process which would take time and also would be cost effective. This technology has the capability to keep itself intact the most required accuracy, quality and efficacy.
The regulatory authorities noticing this trend in clinical trials have come out with few guidelines for the usage of software in clinical trials like EDC for data capture, SAS for Analytics and Reporting, eCTD for common standard of submissions and more in compliance with 21 CFR Part 11, CDISC standards, HL7, ICH guidelines.
Today many organizations associated with clincal trials are making use of these softwares available from good vendors. These softwares help us in automating the part of the process related to clinical trials and helps us in saving time and cost, preserving accuracy. This is the situation of change that clinical trials over the years have witnessed.
For Clinical trials now and in future.....whats next!!! whats in store!!! whats the road ahead????
Please contribute your thoughts in terms of the future trends of clinical trials with respect to procedures, process, softwares, Regulatory and all other related issues....
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Clinical Crown 2009
Clinical Crown 2009 is an interesting and innovative game for the mutual benifit of the clinical trials, life sciences and pharma communities...Clinical Crown 2009 promises you fun,entertainment, learning and gears you up for your day to day activities. Lets join collectively for this cause.
Clinical Crown 2009 is aimed at mutual benifit of all. We invite experts, students and other interested people to participate. At the end of the game it is guaranteed that we all shall have at our hand a collectively compile information which shall be useful for all. ClinAsia kindly requests your support and few minutes of your time towards achieving this.
Everyone is invited to participate in this and the following is the simple procedure to participate in Clinical Crown 2009...
Rules:
- Select the most appropriate nick name for yourself by posting your team name as a comment to this article. The name should be catchy and would be great if a name is related to pharma but not mandatory. Further you would be recognized by this name only.
- The next set of rules for the game would be revealed on coming Monday. Hence till Monday team names can be registered.
Thanks in advance for the extended support...
Monday, February 9, 2009
CDISC Services
CDISC is the most significant development for convenience in data exchange without confusion within the pharmaceutical industry and between the industry and regulatory authorities. After being recommended by FDA, this data standard has been implemented by clinical research organizations, contract research organizations, Pharma/biotechnology companies, and other companies which use or generate clinical data. CDISC standards are employed as a service by many organizations as it brings clarity and simplicity to the clinical data which is now far more organized than before after CDISC standards implementation
CDISC standards have a direct and strong impact on the clinical development process. CDISC standards define the data structures within the clinical database management system, case report tabulations and analysis datasets. These standards affect several operative functions where clinical data has to be handled or is handled.
ClinAsia has a very deep understanding of CDISC standards and services and believes these help in achieving the miracles in driving the Clinical Research process. Hence provides a number of services on the lines of CDISC.
At ClinAsia the first step in the CDISC mapping specification document service employs the comparison of the study metadata on par with the SDTM domain metadata. In complex studies where the CDM metadata was most suitable to the maximum extent possible with SDTM metadata, it is recommended to make use of automated mapping as a first step. Then If CDISC standard data sets and variable names were properly arranged in the CDM data sets, it is more suggested to use a data step or SQL select to verify for direct matches and document then so that the validity of the mappings can be mapped. This procedure only serves as a first step of SDTM metadata mapping, but it can purposefully eliminate hours of manual mapping. If the CDM metadata is not mapping with the SDTM metadata or if SDTM specifications were improperly used, then auto mapping is suggested to be avoided as the best choice
The successive step at ClinAsia in this service area employs manual mapping of the study data sets to the actual domain data sets and then there by mapping each single variable to the appropriate domain. Varying on how the CDM data is structured, you may have a facility to map each CDM file to every suitable single domain, and ensure a split its variables among multiple domains, or a combination of variables from multiple CDM files into a single existing domain. There are many types of variable mapping possible.
www.clinasia.com
Friday, February 6, 2009
Phase 0 and phase 1 clinical studies to be completely outsourced to India by 2011
The Asian Clinical Trials industry is being expected to be around $1.5 billion in 2008 and is all ready to double itself in size by 2012. The huge share of Clinical Trials industry in Asia will be held by India, China and Russia. Many other Asian countries that are very firstly developing the most required technical expertise and resources skills necessary to cater to the growing global trend of outsourcing clinical research are Taiwan, Hongkong and South Korea.
Asia is the fastest growing outsourced clinical research destination in the Globe; with the clinical research market in Asia estimated to double in size by 2012.Asia’s big advantage remains the availability of large numbers of well-qualified personnel. The cost benefits of conducting a clinical trial in Asia are well proven by the whopping 50 percent savings in conducting phase I, and nearly 60 percent savings in conducting phase II & III trials in Asia.
This growth is further augmented by the rapid advances made in the improvement of medical infrastructure in Asia.Local corporate hospitals like the Apollo group are expanding their presence in various parts of Asia and are adding several different types of specialties to each center. Also, International hospital chains like Columbia-Asia have entered Asia and are all set to scale-up the medical infrastructure in Asia to International levels.
These changes have increased the confidence of global pharmaceutical companies in Asia being able to provide quality CRO services.Benefits such as diversity, availability of patients, availability of medical, scientific and laboratory resources, educational qualification, cost-effective labor and infrastructure, availability of resources, growing compliance on quality and regulatory standards, intellectual capital, services conscious culture, host of major outsourcing services platforms, fastest growing continent, and climatic condition.
Surveys and studies for the last year reveal that India has been the most preferred clinical destination in Asia. Last year India has bagged around 139 clinical studies outsourced to it, on the other hand china could bag only 98 studies, clearly showing the growth in India’s stature in Asia as the most preferred clinical destination. ClinAsia is completely leveraging on this Asia Advantage. This is the hot topic now and many international CRO’s are looking to increase their operations in Asian region.
One other study says that India is all set to capture 15% of the world’s clinical studies market by 2011 and all initial studies phase 0 and phase 1 would be outsourced to India completely. ClinAsia is one among few to have realized this potential at the earliest and planned its services on the similar trend second to none.
www.clinasia.com