In today’s ACT Brief, we examine who decides what trials measure, how designing for human thinking improves site execution, and how the FDA extended an immunotherapy to a new bladder cancer population.
News|Podcasts|July 8, 2026
ACT Brief: Simplifying Trials Through Selective Safety Data, AI-Driven Site Partnerships, and Biopharma Strategic Pivots
Author(s)Andy Studna, Senior Editor
In today's ACT Brief, we examine how selective safety data collection could ease operational burden and address investigator shortages, why site-specific technology limits AI adoption, and how regulatory pressure and patent cliffs are reshaping R&D investment strategy.
This is the Applied Clinical Trials Brief—your fast track to the latest insights shaping clinical operations and drug development.
- In the final segment of his
interview , Rob DiCicco, vice president of portfolio management at TransCelerate Biopharma, looked ahead to how simplification enabled by selective safety data collection could ease broader trial operations and help address the shrinking investigator pool. Reducing protocol burden through proven selective monitoring could make trial participation more attractive to investigators while maintaining the rigor regulators expect. - In a new
Q&A , Liz Beatty, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Inato, discussed how real-time site and patient data is reducing non-enrolling sites and accelerating enrollment when AI-driven patient matching replaces manual feasibility estimates. The biggest barrier to adoption remains sponsor-specific technology; sites working with multiple sponsors need platform-agnostic tools that improve their efficiency across trials rather than tools designed for individual company workflows. - In a Pharmaceutical Executive
article , Partha Anbil examined how regulatory rejections drive more conservative pipelines while demand shocks in hot areas like GLP-1s push risk-taking in centralized firms. The Inflation Reduction Act's "pill penalty" redirecting capital from small molecules to biologics, combined with the looming patent cliff, is forcing companies to prioritize drug repurposing and clinical data harmonization to unlock asset value and navigate compressed pricing windows.
That's all for today's ACT Brief. Join us tomorrow for more updates shaping clinical operations and drug development. Thanks for listening.
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