From vaccine to treatment - the changing COVID clinical research landscape

From vaccine to treatment - the changing COVID clinical research landscape

Source: Velocity Clinical Research

"Towards the end of January, the number of trial leads coming into Velocity Clinical Research for infectious disease treatments overtook the number of studies for vaccines for the first time. In March, the number of treatment studies far exceeded that of vaccine research. We are seeing a shift in how the world fights coronavirus, moving from pandemic to endemic, unless the new variant BA.2 proves otherwise. 

"This shift was reinforced by Moderna’s announcement to make its mRNA technology available for free in over 90 emerging countries, whilst making more wealthier nations pay for access—something it deems commercially fair for its intellectual property. It hopes that by sharing its IP for free, underdeveloped nations will still have the tools to control the virus amongst their populations. 

"Treatment research is more difficult to recruit for. They require both the patient with the virus and the person they are living with to agree to take part, which isn’t always top of mind when you are ill. However, the COVID pandemic essentially provided free marketing for the clinical research sector, meaning we are still seeing healthy interest in these trials, as awareness of studies is still high. 

"COVID research, be it treatment or vaccine will become a permanent fixture in the clinical research agenda. New vaccine trials are testing the efficacy of combining them with things like flu and shingles. Of course, vaccine trials launched in Summer 2020 remain active as people start to receive their fourth dose." 

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About Dr Paul Evans

Paul joined Velocity Clinical Research as President and CEO in 2018 after 26 years of “perfect symmetry” in the site business: 13 years running sites and 13 years managing them on the sponsor / CRO side. He has held positions at PAREXEL and IQVIA in site solution roles, and was a founder and managing director of Synexus. 

He holds a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of London. Paul joined Velocity Clinical Research to take on what he sees as one of the fundamental industry challenges: “Patient recruitment is still the biggest problem in clinical trials. I want Velocity to set a new industry standard for delivering high-quality study data as quickly and efficiently as possible.” He has served on the Board of Trustees for the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) since 2017 and will be Chairman in 2020.

About Velocity

Velocity Clinical Research, headquartered in Durham, NC, is the leading integrated site organization for clinical trials, offering dedicated site capabilities to help biopharmaceutical and contract research organization customers find the right patients for their studies. Velocity supports global drug development in primarily conducting phase II and phase III clinical trials. The company has 30 U.S. locations across 14 states.

We place the care of the patient at the heart of everything we do. With over 35 years of experience running sites and more than 7000 studies completed, Velocity has refined its patient recruitment strategies while maintaining a focus on delivering timely and reliable data quality. For more information visit our website at https://velocityclinical.com.