Eli Lilly is once again taking to the road for its clinical trials, but this time it’s aiming at underrepresented trial subjects as it continues to find workarounds for the COVID-19 chaos.
Last summer, the Big Pharma and the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases created and deployed a small fleet of specialized mobile units to support a COVID drug trial at long-term care facilities.
Now, it’s tapping a new fleet of around 20 recreational vehicles to add greater diversity to its studies, including helping participants from Hispanic and Black areas and lower-income rural regions, according to 13 WTHR.
The focus last year on older and more vulnerable people made sense, given we hadn’t started vaccinating anyone; now, with large swaths of that population inoculated, Lilly clearly wants to turn its attention more broadly to keeping R&D going, while ensuring it can create access to those traditionally underrepresented in studies.
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This forms part of the hybrid siteless trial approach, which aims to tap new trial tech to allow subjects to stay at home, where possible, but still be able to participate in biopharma R&D. This also comes as diversity in clinical trials is under the spotlight: Members of Black and Hispanic communities have been some of the hardest hit from COVID, but, in many COVID vaccine tests, have been a tiny proportion of trial participants.
A number of companies have pledged to do better, and Lilly’s approach may well spur similar action in the future.