• Two years ago, the top study brokers appeared to be a more homogenous group, both in terms of performance and market position. Now they are pursuing divergent growth strategies.
• Sponsor and CRO site selection practices remain fragmented and unsystematic. Even with the emergence of new site selection services, many of them on the Internet, study brokers maintain that their key to success lies in the nature and quality of their relationships with client sites.

Article 206: Slow Change in CRO Contracts

• From fixed unit to performance-based and risk-sharing contracts, there is a high level of variability in the types of clinical service contracts used in sponsor-CRO and sponsor-investigative site contracts.
• In this article, CenterWatch editorial looks at the types of contracts in use today and the ways that contracting practices may evolve.

Article 207: CentreStage Europe: The Rise of Personnel Recruitment Firms

• The growth of the clinical trials industry has created a need for sponsors and CROs to find more efficient ways to recruit clinical research personnel. An increasing number of European personnel recruitment firms have identified this need as a new opportunity, and the result has been a burgeoning clinical research personnel recruitment marketplace. Eighty-eight percent of European investigative sites perform clinical research on a part-time basis, and a relatively small number of commercial investigative sites operate in Europe. As a result, personnel recruitment firms tend to target the needs of pharmaceutical companies and CROs.

• One of the most common gastrointestinal disorders is gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), which affects more than 60 million Americans. GERD is a chronic, severe form of heartburn that has the potential to erode the inner lining of the lower esophagus over time. CenterWatch has identified a current total of eight drugs in the clinical development pipeline with a few more drugs in the preclinical stages. We estimate that between $35 million and $38 million will be spend in investigator grants for GERD projects this year.