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NIHR launches campaign to highlight UK expertise in delivering complex and innovative trials

Published: 19 January 2020

Following the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy progress update released last week, which highlights the NIHR’s role in making  Complex Innovative Design (CID) studies ‘business as usual’, a  new web page is now available: Delivering complex and innovative trials.

The UK Life Sciences Industrial Strategy (August 2017), the Strategy progress update (13 January 2020) and the Life Sciences Sector Deal 2 (December 2018), all set out the Government’s commitment to consolidate the UK as a world-leader in delivering complex and innovative trials. The NIHR has been supporting the delivery of a significant number of Complex Innovative Design (CID) studies over the last decade and, consequently, the UK has a wealth of expertise and capabilities in this area. The purpose of the new Delivering complex and innovative trials web page is to showcase that expertise, share best practice and signpost our customers to access NIHR support to design, fund and deliver CID studies.

The webpage has been launched with a ‘Spotlight on Renal’ CIDs,  among other case studies. The spotlight features video content including a case study about a commercial adaptive trial in which the UK recruited the first global patient to the study and was joint top recruiting country alongside Belgium.

Further case studies will be added over the coming months to demonstrate the breadth of UK expertise and NIHR capabilities in terms of specialty areas and different complex and innovative study designs.

CID trials are increasingly being used by researchers instead of traditional drug development pathways involving clinical trials from phases 1 to 4. The CID approach enables researchers to carry out more complex trials that address multiple clinical questions at once.

For example, a drug can be simultaneously evaluated for safety and efficacy with different cancer types, and new cancer types can be added as the trial progresses. The CID approach can accelerate the traditional route to drug licencing which, in layman’s terms, means  faster and more efficient ways of bringing new treatments to patients.

The launch of this web page follows the publication of 10 recommendations for conducting high-quality CID trials are which was published in the British Journal of Cancer and was led by the Experimental  Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC) Network.

View the Delivering complex and innovative trials web page.

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