CEOs save time, money with clearer trial contracts

A group of CEOs is hoping to save companies time and money by improving the legal contracts required to initiate cancer trials. Founded in 2001, the CEO Roundtable on Cancer is a nonprofit group that seeks to eliminate cancer as a public health threat.

Research has shown that the clinical trial contract negotiation phase can take as many as 300 days, stretching out development time and wasting millions of dollars in legal fees and other expenses. The Round able worked with the National Cancer institute to study legal concepts and provision common in many trial contracts, and drafted a universal template based on the criteria most company use. "The group hopes to shorten the drug testing process by making available 'common language' for clinical trial contracts through a set of standardized contract templates for use by NCI-designated cancer centers and the pharmaceutical industry," the group said in a statement.

Use of the template is, of course, voluntary. But the group believes that the standardized contract can cut contract negotiation time down from a median of 172 day to just 30 days.

- see this release

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