• By 2005, there will not be enough clinical investigators to handle the number of drugs in clinical development. CenterWatch estimates that there may be as much as a 15% investigator shortfall in five years.
• Although changes in study design may address some of this shortfall, targeted training and incentive programs will also need to be offered to attract and educate investigators. Sponsors may also place more trials abroad to handle capacity shortages.

Article 214: In Pursuit of Better Returns from Investigator Meetings

• Sites are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with investigator meetings despite sponsor practices to hold the meetings in enticing locations.
• Sponsors spent over $330 million on investigator meetings in 2000. To optimize this spending, sponsors are looking to improve meeting venues and agendas and to centralize meeting planning management.

• Recently two U.K.-based SMOs - Synexus and Profiad - successfully raised more than $12 million in venture capital funding. Profiad closed a second round of £5 million in financing - an estimated $7.2 million - from Mercury Private Equity. Mercury had previously invested £7.1 million in Profiad in September 1999. Synexus recently secured its first round of £4 million, or $5.7 million, from Aberdeen Murray Johnstone Private Equity.

• Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness in which the mind betrays itself. People afflicted with this disease experience severe perceptual disturbances such as auditory or visual hallucinations or bizarre delusions. Schizophrenics also lose cognitive ability, retreating into their own worlds. They forget how to interact with other people and lose motivation and animation. This illness usually strikes people in their late teens or twenties and has a progressively deteriorating course. CenterWatch has identified 21 drugs currently in the clinical pipeline and estimates that $120 to $130 million will be spent on their development.