CRO News
A CRO, or contract research organization, is a company that is contracted to perform all or part of a sponsor's clinical trials-related tasks. This might include the design, monitoring, and management of trials, the analysis of results, and other specialty duties that drug developers do not have the capacity to perform efficiently.
CROs, such as Biovail and Quintiles, come in many shapes and sizes, and present different value propositions depending on their make up. Some specialize in conducting early stage clinical trials, while others perform late stage trials. By maintaining databases of either healthy clinical trials candidates or patients with specific conditions, CROs can streamline the recruitment process, saving the sponsor valuable time and money. Many CROs have their own clinics in which clinical trials can be carried out, negating the sponsor's need to pay for more costly hospital stays for trials participants.
A key reason drug developers use CROs is that they help hedge market risk. By choosing a CRO that has conducted many clinical trials in a certain area of specialization, the sponsor reaps the benefit of the expertise that the CRO has developed over time, without having to build up its own staff of experts in that area of specialization. By relinquishing some of the tasks associated with validating new ideas, sponsors can allocate more resources to cutting edge research while saving money in the process.
