NIH, Drug Industry Target Barriers to Patient Accrual in Clinical Trials

A new partnership between the National Institutes of Health and
five major drug companies will provide a total of $6 million to several cancer
centers to find ways to increase accrual to early clinical trials. The five
pharmaceutical firms involved in the pilot program are Aventis, Bristol-Myers
Squibb, Eli Lilly and Co, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis. The National Cancer
Institute (NCI) intends to award funds only to clinical and comprehensive cancer
centers that it supports, because these institutions have the infrastructure in
place to conduct early-phase trials at the community level. Applicants will
compete for a share of approximately $3 million annually for 2 years. Half that
amount will come from the NCI and the other half from industry. The effort is
not intended to expand existing programs or systems at NCI cancer centers but to
encourage novel solutions to overcome existing barriers to trial accruals and
increase the performance of the existing systems.