Building Strong CRO-Sponsor Partnerships to Improve Clinical Trial Success

In a recent video interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Judith Ng-Cashin, MD, chief medical officer, Novotech discussed the company’s recent accomplishment of winning the Citeline CRO Partnership of the Year Award in recognition of its partnership with Tune Therapeutics. Ng-Cashin highlighted the importance of seamless, trusting relationships in clinical research, as well as the roles of cost efficiency, risk-based approaches, and leveraging CRO expertise to navigate partnerships in the evolving regulatory landscape.

ACT: Novotech was recently awarded the Citeline CRO Partnership of the Year Award in recognition of its collaboration with Tune Therapeutics. Could you discuss the importance of this award to the clinical research industry? What does it mean to Novotech to win it this year?

Ng-Cashin: I think the more that sponsors and their CROs can really develop a seamless, trusting, collaborative relationship as they go into a clinical development program, a study, whatever it is, the better off everyone is—the sponsor, the CRO, the investigator, but most importantly, the patient, because then the patient is well taken care of. I think what's challenging about that is everybody's coming at the execution of a particular study with a different perspective, with slightly different objectives, so the more that you can get aligned proactively before the beginning of a study, and really set common goals that everyone understands. I think you're setting yourself up for success. Of course, we're dealing with humans, we're dealing with science, we're dealing with biology, so there's always going to be something that's unexpected, something that throws a wrench in the process, but if you build that foundation, I think you're making it easier for yourself, and setting yourself up for success.

Why is it important for the industry? I've been in the industry both on the sponsor side and on the CRO side for over 20 years at this point. The whole ecosystem on how we get clinical trials done has evolved from when I started in big pharma, everything is in house to where I am with Novotech, where we largely service the biotech sector, so that might be five people in an office, and they really are counting on us to be their partners and extension of themselves. The more examples we have of how to do this successfully, the more everyone benefits, because it's very heterogeneous, and how people execute on this, so if we can point to success stories collectively, I think we all do better. Like I said in the beginning, for both ourselves, but also the patients that we serve.

What does this mean for Novotech? Listen, we are thrilled. It is our business model. It is our ethos that we should be a strategic partner, not just as we used to think of it, “I'm the head, you're the arms and legs.” That I think, is not a winning strategy for any kind of company on either side, so for us to really have external recognition that what we did with Tune was a step in the right direction in terms of partnership, and being an example of that, and being recognized for that, it just means the world to the company, so we're really, really proud of that.