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

A new partnership between the National Institutes of Health andfive major drug companies will provide a total of $6 million to several cancercenters to find ways to increase accrual to early clinical trials. The fivepharmaceutical firms involved in the pilot program are Aventis, Bristol-MyersSquibb, Eli Lilly and Co, GlaxoSmithKline, and Novartis. The National CancerInstitute (NCI) intends to award funds only to clinical and comprehensive cancercenters that it supports, because these institutions have the infrastructure inplace to conduct early-phase trials at the community level. Applicants willcompete for a share of approximately $3 million annually for 2 years. Half thatamount will come from the NCI and the other half from industry. The effort isnot intended to expand existing programs or systems at NCI cancer centers but toencourage novel solutions to overcome existing barriers to trial accruals andincrease the performance of the existing systems.