In this video interview, Mwango Kashoki, MD, MPH, senior vice president and global head of regulatory strategy at Parexel, outlines the steps sponsors can take today—from early FDA engagement and robust non-clinical programs to adaptive trial designs and confirmatory evidence packages—to avoid delays as the guidance moves toward finalization.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore how disease heterogeneity confounds natural history controls, the execution translation gap converting identified problems into action, and policy recommendations for strengthening FDA's accelerated approval pathway.
In this video interview, Mwango Kashoki, MD, MPH, senior vice president and global head of regulatory strategy at Parexel, discusses how heterogeneity in disease course and patient characteristics creates confounding risk when using natural history data as an external control, and what sponsors need to do to achieve meaningful patient matching.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore biological and dosing considerations for basket trial designs, how human-relevant data earlier in development reduces late-stage failures, and FDA's shift toward single-trial approvals supported by real-world evidence.
In this Q&A, Jenna DiRito, PhD, COO and co-founder of Revalia Bio, discusses how earlier, human-relevant data is reshaping go/no-go decision-making in drug development and what a truly front-loaded workflow looks like in practice.
In this video interview, Mwango Kashoki, MD, MPH, senior vice president and global head of regulatory strategy at Parexel, examines the biological, dosing, and population-level considerations that sponsors must get right from the start when using basket and other master protocol designs to evaluate individualized therapies across multiple conditions.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore how FDA evaluates effectiveness for ultra-rare individualized therapies, the agency's enforcement push for mandatory trial result reporting, and Obsidian's merger backed by $350 million to advance next-generation TIL cell therapy.
Agency outreach targets a compliance gap affecting thousands of registered trials, with nearly 30% of studies subject to mandatory reporting showing no results submitted to ClinicalTrials.gov.
In this video interview, Mwango Kashoki, MD, MPH, senior vice president and global head of regulatory strategy at Parexel, breaks down how the FDA evaluates substantial evidence of effectiveness for individualized therapies in ultra-rare conditions, and why that determination depends on the totality of mechanistic, biomarker, and clinical outcome data rather than trial numbers alone.
In today's ACT Brief, we examine how protocol interpretation and source document preparation delay study startup, how the plausible mechanism framework accelerates individualized therapy timelines, and how real-time tracking technologies improve supply chain and sample integrity in decentralized trials.
In this video interview, Mwango Kashoki, MD, MPH, senior vice president and global head of regulatory strategy at Parexel, explains how the plausible mechanism framework reshapes the development timeline for individualized therapies by allowing first-in-human studies to serve as pivotal trials and giving sponsors earlier clarity on the evidence needed for approval.
In today's ACT Brief, we examine Thermo Fisher's expanded real-world data access through HealthVerity, how FHIR-based standards are finally enabling scalable eSource implementation, and FDA's second complete response letter for Replimune's oncolytic immunotherapy.
New agreement provides enterprise-level access to claims data covering more than 270 million de-identified patient lives, supporting trial feasibility, recruitment, and real-world evidence generation.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore industry perspectives on operational and methodological shifts defining 2026, how agentic AI will augment clinical trial roles over the next two years, and Roche's expanded partnership with C4 Therapeutics on next-generation antibody conjugates.
In this Q&A, Krishna Cheriath, VP and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, examines how AI is reshaping clinical operations—from case intake and trial design to site burden reduction and the emerging reality of agentic AI in the workforce.
In today's ACT Brief, we examine why expanding governance layers slow digital modernization initiatives, how AI will augment clinical trial roles over the next two years, and how evolving regulatory frameworks are reshaping biopharmaceutical development timelines.
In this video interview, Krishna Cheriath, vice president and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, introduces a practical augmentation scale for thinking about how AI agents will transform clinical trial roles over the next two years and why workforce planning for that shift needs to start now.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore why clinical trial diversity requires protocol redesign from the outset, the highest-impact opportunities for AI across the complete trial lifecycle, and the regulatory and operational barriers slowing companion diagnostic adoption in oncology.
In this video interview, Krishna Cheriath, vice president and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, maps the highest-impact opportunities for AI across the trial lifecycle—from smarter protocol design and enrollment matching to data collection, cycle time compression, and the emerging potential of synthetic data in rare disease.
In today's ACT Brief, we examine the technical and operational challenges of implementing risk-based monitoring across global trials, how AI must address social determinants of health and site burden, and the emerging role of domain-specific generative AI in clinical practice.
In this video interview, Krishna Cheriath, vice president and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, argues that effective patient-centered AI must go beyond direct-to-patient tools to address social determinants of health and reduce the administrative burden on sites so that investigators can focus predominantly on the patient.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore the leadership priorities that enable meaningful AI gains in clinical research, how Bayesian methodologies are reshaping trial design and innovation, and proposed federal budget cuts threatening NIH research funding.
The administration's latest budget proposal seeks sweeping reductions to federal health research funding, including the elimination of several NIH institutes and centers.
In this video interview, Krishna Cheriath, vice president and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, outlines the leadership priorities, team structures, and boundary-spanning capabilities that separate organizations that realize meaningful AI gains from those that struggle to move beyond the pilot stage.
In today's ACT Brief, we examine how real-world data is being applied across oncology, ophthalmology, and other therapeutic areas to optimize trial design, how AI is reshaping clinical case intake workflows, and enrollment barriers that led Pfizer and BioNTech to halt a COVID-19 vaccine trial.
In this video interview, Krishna Cheriath, vice president and head of clinical research digital data and AI at Thermo Fisher Scientific, explains how AI is being applied to case intake today and why successful adoption depends less on technology than on reimagining workflows and investing in workforce upskilling.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore how digital twin technology creates reliable virtual control arms from historical data, what defines an effective clinical trial tech stack in complex studies, and emerging vaccine platforms advancing toward universal influenza protection.
In this Q&A, Cheryl Kole, vice president of solution strategy and commercialization at Almac Clinical Technologies, examines what it takes to build and sustain a clinical trial technology infrastructure that can keep pace with increasingly complex study designs.
In today's ACT Brief, we explore how to decide which trial complexities warrant core technology platforms versus custom configurations, how measuring patient and site experiences early identifies actionable solutions, and Daiichi Sankyo's collaboration with Tempus to improve ADC patient selection through AI.
In this video interview, Cheryl Kole, vice president of solution strategy and commercialization at Almac Clinical Technologies, offers a framework for thinking about which emerging trial complexities deserve to be built into core technology platforms and which are better managed as bespoke, one-off configurations.
