With more than $217 million raised in the past year and at least five executive hires in the past six months, Medable has the resources to boost diversity in clinical trials and expand globally.
The Palo Alto, California-based company is focused on making the drug development process more accessible through decentralized clinical trials, enhanced recruitment, data improvement and partnerships.
"Fundamentally, the reason why I took this role is because we’re not making medicines for everyone. Clinical trials are very limited in their access, even when they’re decentral in today’s day, and if we don’t test a diverse population, then we’re certainly not measuring the outcomes that we would need for a diverse population,” said Sanskriti Thakur, chief growth officer, in an interview following her appointment last week. Thakur previously led the global life sciences research team for Accenture.
In a year’s time, Thakur said she’d like to see Medable go from 1 million patients on the platform to 10 million. “I'd like to see a more diverse population than any clinical trial has ever delivered before,” the executive said, noting engagement and trust between patients and the industry are paramount.
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Representation in clinical trials is a long-running issue. Across trials for 59 novel drugs approved in 2018, white patients comprised an average of 69% of the trial population, whereas Black patients made up 11%, Asian patients represented 10% and Hispanic patients comprised 14%.
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the stark differences in trial demographics and led researchers to call out Gilead Sciences for lack of equal representation of Black, Latinx and Native Americans in clinical trials for Veklury.
Experts have said the pandemic could lead to a renewed effort to diversify trials. For its part, the FDA offered guidance last November to “further promote and protect public health” with an emphasis on trials representing the population.
Medable’s Thakur said it is not just clinical research organizations “that are the future,” but also Big Pharma and biotechs that want “more control over how they test medicines and therapeutics” and other treatments. Opportunities exist across real-world evidence management and appropriate data collection as well as geographically across pharmacies and other points of care, Thakur said.
“Medable as a platform can be on anyone’s phone, where we open the door for any patient—human being, not even a patient yet—to engage and take action on their health in advance of having any health issue.”
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Thakur was announced as chief growth officer last week in a role meant to be “nimble” and strategic to capture the current momentum. The decentralized clinical trial space has garnered investment in other companies like Science 37 and Curebase, and Dassault Systemes’ Medidata has gone all in on decentralization.
To capitalize on this surge in investment and heightened awareness, Medable has made at least five executive hires this year, including a chief scientific officer who previously was executive director of the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative, a chief product officer from Tesla, a chief design officer from air travel company Aero and a chief operating officer from Oracle. The nontraditional life sciences backgrounds of many of these executives helps bring different perspectives to Medable, Thakur said.
Other leadership team members to join this year include a chief people officer, an executive vice president of technology and at least four other vice presidents.
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More leadership hires will be made public “fairly soon,” Thakur said. With these leaders and multiple rounds of financing under its belt, Medable is focused on evolving the product and growing globally, with work in about 60 countries and 40 languages already.
“We have enough funding to reach those milestones, and I'd like to see us do that well before we consider other types of avenues to raise capital,” Thakur said.