Could a Cure for Alzheimer’s be Invented in the Triangle? Absolutely.

Old people with neurodegenerative diseases
By The Editors of Talking Trials, July 26, 2018

Currently, the estimated annual cost of nine common neurological diseases totals to $800 billion, predictably increasing as the elderly population doubles by 2050. More specifically, there is a catastrophic unmet need in Alzheimer’s disease treatment, prevention and clinical research. In a recent segment with WRAL News’ Health Team with Dr. Allen Mask, Worldwide Clinical Trials’ chief operating officer, Peter Benton, discusses Worldwide’s uncommon approach to fighting against neurodegenerative diseases through its recent partnership with Datavant.

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Secure, Real-World Data Drives Enhanced Insights for Neurodegenerative Disease Trials

Neurodegenerative diseases
By Dr. Natalia Drosopoulou, Executive Director of Project Management and Franchise Area Lead in Neuroscience, Worldwide Clinical Trials, July 9, 2018

Neurodegenerative disease clinical trials are challenging, but they don’t have to be. Optimizing clinical trial patient recruitment and outcomes with external data sets can open new opportunities for pharma and biotech companies seeking to enhance their clinical trials in areas such as compliance, adherence, enrollment, safety, and even efficacy.

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A Methodology for Advancing the Selection of Biomarkers for Use in Psychiatric Clinical Trials – Part 1

biomarkers in brain diagnostics
By Natalia Drosopoulou, Ph.D., Executive Director of Global Project Management, Neuroscience, Worldwide Clinical Trials, April 11, 2018

  For this two-part blog series, Talking Trials asked Worldwide’s Dr. Drosopoulou, author of the recent article, “A Methodology for Advancing the Selection of Biomarkers for Use in Psychiatric Clinical Trials,” published in the Journal for Clinical Studies, to weigh in on the use of biomarkers for clinical research. Clinical trials using biomarkers in patient selection have higher overall success probabilities than clinical trials without biomarkers.1 That’s one of the many compelling results from a recent study of drug development success published in the journal Biostatistics. Wong and colleagues found clinical trials using biomarkers to stratify patients exhibit almost twice the overall probability of success compared to trials without biomarkers (10.3% vs. 5.5%).

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Treatment-Resistant Schizophrenia – New Definitions for Research and Clinical Use

By Bartosz Janikowski, M.D., Vice President, Medical & Scientific Affairs, Worldwide Clinical Trials, January 17, 2017

Treatment-resistant schizophrenia is a phenomenon that most clinicians and researchers try to combat in their daily practices. Treatment-resistant schizophrenics are patients who are repeatedly admitted to hospitals or require frequent visits to specialists or, as study subjects, are often excluded from participation in efficacy and safety studies of new antipsychotic medications. That said, the research community faced various definitions of treatment-resistance and response to schizophrenia treatments and was also often not looking specifically into the issue of the adequate adherence to treatments provided sometimes resulting in confusion between treatment resistance and potential resistance to treatment.

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