Lord O’Shaughnessy review into commercial clinical trials in the UK

Last week saw the publication of Lord O’Shaughnessy’s review into the commercial clinical trials in the UK. Commissioned in February of this year, the review aimed to identify ways to address the challenges faced when conducting commercial clinical trials across the UK, and to set out how to transform the UK clinical trial environment.

The focus on commercial trials is vital. For several years, data has been showing a decline in the UK’s commercial trial portfolio, and a lengthening in the time it takes to set-up and then recruit into industry trials. Comparatively, many European and global competitor countries are improving their performance.

The report includes 27 recommendations for how the required changes should be made - you can read the full report here.

Some of the projects WFC are currently working on are included in the report as case studies, including the ECMC Network Study Set-up project, being delivered in collaboration with the HRA and MHRA (as part of the UK Clinical Research Recovery, Resilience, and Growth Programme).

Crucially, the government response (available here) welcomes all the recommendations and committs up to £121m to tackle 5 initial actions. This includes the development of Clinical Trial Acceleration Networks (CTANs), likely to focus on infectious disease vaccines, cancer, and dementia.

The HRA have also published a response welcoming the review (available here), as have the AMRC (here) and the ABPI (here).