medwireNews: Researchers report a marked decrease in the number of oncology clinical trials launched during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the prepandemic period.
Drawing on data from a global commercial clinical trial platform, the researchers found that of the 1440 trials launched during the observation period – which comprised five 8-month durations between October 2015 and May 2020 – just 76 were initiated during the pandemic (January–May 2020).
This equated to an incidence rate ratio of 0.40 for the pandemic versus prepandemic period, say Elizabeth Lamont (Acorn AI by Medidata, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) and colleagues in a research letter to JAMA Network Open.
“This large pandemic-associated decrease in trial launches raises concern regarding its potential negative impact on the development of new cancer therapies, and to the extent that these findings are generalizable to other conditions, the momentum of scientific progress for other disease areas as well,” they write.
The study used data from the Medidata Enterprise Data Store, which includes trials hosted on the RAVE platform, and focused on phase 1–4 trials of drugs or biologic agents that opened for accrual.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2021 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group
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