ACT Brief: EU Comparator Drug Sourcing Pressures, AI Expands Its Role in Oncology Trials, and Rethinking AI Value in Clinical Development

This is the Applied Clinical Trials Brief—your fast track to the latest insights shaping clinical operations and drug development.

• A new contributed article in Applied Clinical Trials outlines the operational and regulatory hurdles involved in securing comparator drugs across competitive EU markets. The piece details how limited availability, fragmented regulatory interpretations, supplier concentration, and complex cold-chain logistics can disrupt trial timelines, while emphasizing early forecasting, flexible sourcing strategies, and strong wholesaler partnerships as key risk-mitigation approaches.
• BostonGene has expanded its oncology footprint through a new collaboration with AstraZeneca focused on applying its AI foundation model to early clinical development. Under the agreement, AstraZeneca will use BostonGene’s multi-modal analytics to inform patient selection, safety, and efficacy predictions, while BostonGene continues parallel collaborations with Kyoto University in esophageal cancer and SWOG on a large biomarker-driven small cell lung cancer trial.
• And in a recent Pharmaceutical Executive video interview, Trialynx founder and CEO Angela Schwab discussed how AI life sciences companies are being evaluated more critically as they head into major investor meetings like JPM. Schwab emphasized that platforms grounded in deep domain expertise, structured workflows, and measurable impact on trial design, patient burden, and site feasibility are increasingly standing apart from generic AI tools.

That’s all for today’s ACT Brief. Join us tomorrow for more updates shaping clinical operations and drug development. Thanks for listening.