COVID-19 Disrupts Oncology Trials

COVID-19 disruptions reveal heavy impacts on the global Oncology Phase II clinical trials, as per GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company. Several factors including delayed initiation, enrollment suspension, and slow enrolment are the known contributing factors for these disruptions.

The total number of clinical trials that were disrupted showed that slow enrollment was the top reason, followed by enrollment suspension and lastly delayed initiation as reported by GlobalData's global survey of key opinion leaders in the pharma industry.

‘COVID-19 disruptions reveal heavy impacts on the global Oncology Phase II clinical trials. One of the important reasons for this is the fact that there are more clinical trials in therapy areas of oncology. This adds a challenge in providing the necessary cancer care during this pandemic. ’

"As there are more clinical trials in oncology, it is not surprising that it is the most disrupted of the therapy areas. The main challenge has been providing the necessary cancer care during the pandemic. Finding the necessary resources such as ventilation systems and even staff is an on-going challenge for most healthcare providers. Globally, North America far exceeds all other countries when it comes to multinational and single-country disrupted clinical trials, due to more trials being completed in this region. Europe is second, followed by Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and South and Central America," says Scotty Chung-Siu, MPH, Senior Analyst at GlobalData.

The report thereby affirms the fact that out of all therapy areas, oncology leads the way in global clinical trials disruption due to the pandemic. Among the different phases of the trials, phase II has the most disrupted global clinical trials in oncology, followed by Phase I, III, and IV.

Source: Medindia