In February 2023, the Government commissioned an independent review to offer recommendations on how to resolve key challenges in conducting commercial clinical trials in the UK and transform the UK commercial clinical trial environment.
The review was conducted by former Health Minister Lord James O’Shaughnessy who consulted closely with industry and a wide range of stakeholders across the UK clinical trials sector and was published yesterday (Thursday) evening and can be read in full here.
The review sets out 27 recommendations, including both priority actions to progress in 2023 and longer-term ambitions for UK commercial trials.
The government response welcomes all recommendations from the review, in principle, and makes five headline commitments backed by £121 million over three years.
These commitments are to:
- Substantially reduce the time taken for approval of commercial clinical trials, with the goal of reaching a 60-day turnaround time for all approvals
- Deliver a comprehensive and mandatory national approach to contracting
- Provide ‘real-time’ data on commercial clinical activity in the UK
- Establish a common approach to contacting patients about research
- Establish clinical trial acceleration networks (CTANs)
Our Director of Research, Policy and Innovation Dr Karen Noble commented: “We welcome this review and will run a forensic eye over it in the coming days and weeks to see where the recommendations might speed up the delivery of new therapeutics and clinical trials to the brain tumour community. This was an area of concern clearly identified by the recently released report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Brain Tumours, Pathway to a Cure – breaking down the barriers. We are also encouraged that this review being published coincided with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt unveiling a £650 million war-chest to fire up the UK’s life sciences sector.”