An Analysis of Sponsors/Collaborators of 69,160 Drug Trials Registered with ClinicalTrials.gov

Shruthi Muralidharan Keezhupalat, Ankeet Naik, Saurabh Gupta, Raghunathan Srivatsan and Gayatri Saberwal

PLOS ONE, 2016, vol. 11, issue 2, 1-7

Abstract: Background: Clinical trials have been criticized on various counts. Any attempt to improve how trials are conducted or reported requires—amongst other things—an understanding of the number, the nature and the location of those that sponsor them or collaborate on them. Here we sought to identify the nature and location of each sponsor/collaborator. Methods and Findings: We examined the 'sponsor/collaborator' field for the 69,160 drug trials that were registered with ClinicalTrials.gov over a 9-year period (2005–2014). Of the 12,823 unique sponsors, 56% had sponsored only one and 27% had sponsored 2–5 trials each. Just 18% were involved with six or more trials each, and we have (arbitrarily) labeled these organizations as 'more experienced' in sponsoring/collaborating on trials. These 18% (2,266 sponsors/collaborators) were analyzed further: (a) 951 were corporate organizations and (b) 1,145 were non-corporates (including 31 individuals) with (c) 170 unclassified. Further, we identified the location of each organization in (a) and (b). Conclusions: Clinical trials are an important part of a nation's research endeavors, and ultimately contribute to the health of its people. Thus, understanding the clinical trial landscape—including the number and nature of sponsors, and how active they are—is important for every country. We believe that policy makers in particular should be interested in this study to understand the current situation, and to use the numbers as a baseline for the evolving landscape, to assess the impact of their strategies in future.

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149416 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.13 ... 49416&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0149416

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0149416

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().