Choosing Different Labs Based on the Therapeutic Area of a Study

In a recent interview with Applied Clinical Trials, Kelli Aufderheide, director, laboratory decentralized trial solutions, IQVIA Laboratories, discussed the benefits of central and local labs for clinical trials. Central labs offer harmonized test menus, standardized data collection, and global reach, ensuring consistent results across labs. Local labs, often co-located with investigator sites, provide quick turnaround times crucial for urgent patient care. In a world of complex clinical trials, stakeholders should support sites by focusing on planning, training, and incorporating feedback to streamline processes and reduce manual work.

A transcript of Aufderheide’s conversation with ACT can be found below.

ACT: How does the therapeutic area of focus for a trial and the related patient population steer decisions on when a sponsor should rely on central labs versus local labs?

Aufderheide: This is really the big key, from my perspective, on what is driving the use of central versus local labs. As we talked about in the first question, the driver, a lot of times for local labs, is that quick turnaround of testing. If you have an oncology study where those patients’ safety values have to be monitored on a regular basis, the results of those tests are going to drive and impact their patient treatment and inform patient treatment decisions from that investigator. We see a lot of local lab use in oncology trials. Those patients are very, very sick. They need those test results turned around quickly, and therapeutic areas like that, where we have a sick population of patients that are more fragile, I would say, then some of the other therapeutic areas, but that's a big driver that we see from a central lab perspective, that would drive the use of local labs for that patient care.