Regulatory

In this Q&A, Adrelia Allen, executive director of clinical trial patient diversity at Merck, discusses how the company is embedding diversity into clinical trial execution—from protocol design and site selection to long-term community engagement that extends well beyond individual trial timelines.

The CNPV program has compressed drug review timelines to as little as one to two months for qualifying sponsors, but succeeding under that pressure requires a fundamental rethink of how development teams plan, communicate, and execute.

Clinical Trials Day is an international celebration of everyone who makes medical discoveries possible. It is also an opportunity to shine a light on the innovations helping to keep research rising.

Webinar Date/Time: Thursday, June 4th, 2026 at 11am EDT|8am PDT|4pm BST|5pm CEST

Pediatric trial participation shapes children's and caregivers' long-term psychological outcomes, yet protocol design often overlooks experience as a variable affecting recruitment, retention, and data integrity—a gap increasingly recognized by regulators and quality standards

FDA Commissioner Marty Makary’s departure caps a turbulent tenure marked by leadership instability, industry pushback, and a series of regulatory controversies that complicated drug development for sponsors and CROs.

As imaging-heavy clinical trials grow more complex and globally distributed, sponsors are increasingly re-evaluating traditional infrastructure models, with cloud-native platforms showing potential to reduce operational burden, accelerate site activation, improve imaging quality oversight, and lower total trial costs.

Zentails announced the first dosage of Azenosertib administered in its phase III Aspenova trial to test azenosertib vs chemotherapy in Cyclin E1-positive platinum-resistant ovarian cancer.

FDA clears Cellenkos’ IND for CK0802, enabling a mid-stage trial in steroid-refractory GVHD.

In this Q&A, Mwango Kashoki, MD, MPH, SVP and global head of regulatory strategy at Parexel, breaks down the FDA's plausible mechanism framework and what it means for sponsors developing individualized therapies in ultra-rare disease settings.

The execution translation gap—the failure to convert identified problems into coordinated, timely action—costs millions per trial through delayed amendments, persistent deviations, and slow site activation, yet remains addressable through aligned accountability and proactive execution management.

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.

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 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 part 3 of this three-part series, behavioral science reveals that clinical trial diversity cannot be achieved through last-minute recruitment efforts, but requires designing protocols, sites, and enrollment strategies around the real barriers and needs of underrepresented communities from the outset.

Risk-based monitoring requires integrated data systems, validated analytics, and strong governance to work effectively across global trials, but sponsors face significant technical and operational challenges that demand strategic solutions and organizational alignment.

The administration's latest budget proposal seeks sweeping reductions to federal health research funding, including the elimination of several NIH institutes and centers.

Real-world data is increasingly used to optimize trial design, reduce recruitment burden, and support regulatory decisions, but adoption remains uneven due to challenges around data quality, integration, and internal alignment across functional areas.

Vaccine developers can reduce participant burden and extend follow-up timelines by strategically combining traditional site visits with real-world data collection, but the choice depends on follow-up duration, data requirements, and the patient population being studied.

Moving beyond vendor evaluation to incentive design in Phase II/III rare and genetic disease trials.

In the first months of 2026, the FDA has moved on multiple fronts to modernize how drugs are developed, evaluated, and approved, signaling a broader regulatory shift toward flexibility, mechanism-based evidence, and human-centric science.