ACT Brief: Portfolio-Level Recruitment Strategy, Real-Time Burden Sampling, and Platinum-Free Bladder Cancer Therapy

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

• In part three of her interview, Gaynor Anders, chief delivery officer at Trialbee, outlined organizational, budgetary, and technological changes sponsors need to shift from study-by-study recruitment to portfolio-level approaches that keep patients engaged across a therapeutic area. This transition requires rethinking patient databases, investigator relationships, and communication strategies to sustain continuous engagement rather than episodic, trial-specific campaigns.
• In a new contributed article, Brian McGowan, Kelly Ritch, and Jason Riis explained how experience sampling captures real-time signals of site burden and operational friction at the moment they occur. Unlike retrospective surveys conducted weeks after events, experience sampling detects workarounds and training gaps while they're actionable, functioning as both measurement and intervention that helps site staff reflect on actual work versus intended workflow.
• FDA approved Padcev plus Keytruda as neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer regardless of cisplatin eligibility, marking the first platinum-free regimen in nearly 25 years to outperform standard chemotherapy. EV-304 trial data showed 47% reduction in recurrence risk and 35% reduction in death risk, with 79.4% of patients event-free at two years compared with 66.2% on standard of care.

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