Castor Establishes Advisory Board of Industry Leaders to Maximize the Impact of its Clinical Data Platform

Industry veterans including Craig Lipset will support the 

Castor’s vision to advance the future of clinical research 

Amsterdam, Netherlands and Hoboken, New Jersey:  November 18, 2019: Castor, a health-tech company that aims to leverage machine readable data to increase clinical trial efficiency, today announces the formation of an independent Advisory Board. 

Castor’s Electronic Data Capture (EDC) platform enables every researcher worldwide to easily capture and integrate medical research data from any source in real-time, including clinicians, patients, devices, wearables, and electronic health record (EHR) systems. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 100,000,000 data points and 1,000,000 enrolled patients.

Over the past few months, Castor’s management team consulted with several experts in the sector to establish an Advisory Board, bringing together top executives and key opinion leaders in the field. The new members will provide invaluable expertise and guidance to help the company achieve its vision of making the world’s research data reusable, enabling AI-driven clinical trials, and ultimately creating a future in which we maximize the impact of data through reuse. 

On welcoming the members, Castor CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD, said: “We are delighted to have attracted this prestigious and diverse group of experts from international institutions to our Advisory Board. This independent body will help us accelerate the development of our platforms, forge new commercial partnerships worldwide, and realize our vision of helping advance medical research. The Board members will bring significant expertise, highly complementary skills and an external perspective, which will be invaluable in informing our strategy as we move forward.”

Craig Lipset, newly appointed Castor Advisory Board member, commented: “Castor has built a platform around a unique vision to transform how medical research data is captured and shared. I am excited to work with my Advisory Board colleagues towards a future where all research data can directly contribute to new treatment options for patients in need. The formation of this board speaks volumes to Castor’s commitment to prioritizing the best interests of patients and researchers alike.”

The Advisory Board members include:

·         Craig Lipset, Former Head of Clinical Innovation at Pfizer, and Advisor/Board Member at various life sciences startups 

·         Baljit (Boo) Samra, Strategic Advisor and Consultant, and former COO at Duke Clinical Research Institute. Prior executive leadership positions held at Parexel

·         Craig Serra, Global Head of Strategy and Innovation, Data Operations at Novartis. Previous leadership positions at Pfizer and Roche

·         Niels van Royen, MD, PhD, Head of Cardiology Department at Radboud University Medical Center

·         Thomas Wurdinger, PhD, Director of the Neuro-Oncology Research Group and Professor at the Amsterdam UMC Cancer Center. Founder of thromboDx (sold to Illumina) 

About Castor 

Based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and New Jersey, US, Castor is an international health-tech company founded in 2012 by CEO Derk Arts, MD, PhD to leverage machine readable data to increase clinical trial efficiency. Castor’s Electronic Data Capture (EDC) platform enables every researcher worldwide to easily capture and integrate medical research data from any source in real-time, including clinicians, patients, devices, wearables, and EHR systems.

Castor is currently collaborating with 30,000 researchers, academic institutions and commercial companies across 90 countries to help them accelerate their studies. The platform has supported more than 4,000 studies that cover a broad range of disease areas including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, rare diseases, and cancer. Researchers on the platform generate vast amounts of data from traditional and decentralized trials, and Castor recently reached milestones of 100,000,000 data points and 1,000,000 enrolled patients. As one of the first companies to leverage machine readable data for clinical research, Castor’s platform will enable AI-driven clinical trials and provide invaluable insights to commercial research.

In 2018 Castor raised $6.25m in funding from healthcare investor INKEF Capital in the Netherlands.