Acceleration is defined as the “increase in the rate or speed of something.” For us that “something” is new stem cell treatments for patients with unmet medical needs. Today our governing Board just approved a $15 million partnership with Quintiles to help us achieve that acceleration.
Quintiles was awarded the funding to create a new Accelerating Center. The goal of the center is to give stem cell researchers the support they need to help make their clinical trials successful.
As our President and CEO Randy Mills said in a news release:
CIRM President Randy Mills addresses the CIRM Board
“Many scientists are brilliant researchers but have little experience or expertise in running a clinical trial; this Accelerating Center means they don’t have to develop those skills; we provide them for them. This partnership with Quintiles means that scientists don’t have to learn how to manage patient enrollment or how to create a data base to manage the results. Instead they are free to focus on what they do best, namely science.”
How does it work? Well, if a researcher has a promising therapy and approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start a clinical trial, the Accelerating Center helps them get that trial off the ground. It helps them find the patients they need, get those patients consented and ready for the trial, and then helps manage the trial and the data from the trial.
The devil is in the details
Managing those details can be a key factor in determining whether a clinical trial is going to be successful. Last year, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine listed the main reasons why clinical trials fail.
Among the reasons are:
- Poor study design: Selecting the wrong patients, the wrong dosing and the wrong endpoint, as well as bad data and bad site management cause severe problems.
- Poor management: A project manager who does not have enough experience in costing and conducting clinical trials will lead to weak planning, with no clear and real timelines, and to ultimate failure.
We hope our partnership with Quintiles in this Accelerating Center will help researchers avoid those and the other pitfalls. As the world’s largest provider of biopharmaceutical development and commercial outsourcing services, Quintiles has a lot of experience and expertise in this area. On its Twitter page it’s slogan is “Better, smarter, faster trials” so I think we made a smart choice.
When Randy Mills first pitched this idea to the Board, he said that he is a great believer in “not asking fish to learn how to fly, they should just do what they do best”.
The Accelerating Center means scientists can do what they do best, and we hope that leads to what patients need most; treatments and cures.
Related Links:
The Stem Cellar 