Including Industry Trials in Your Portfolio Posted on October 19, 2007 Lauren B. Marangell (bio) talks about research funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

It depends, there are actually several ways that an investigator can be funded by industry, and so our core ideology is that we never do a trial that I wouldn’t want to have a family member in, and so it has to be a trial that I really believe will be positive and positive for the patients, and some of those are really Phase III or Phase IV trials that are controlled and that we hope will lead to definitive data about a treatment.

In those types of trials, the key thing is that the contract be very specific that the investigator is not restricted in access to the data or in publishing the data. The problem is with those large, multi center trials, you very rarely have access to the full dataset. You have access to your own data and you’re not restricted in that regard, but often, the findings are with a full dataset.

Now, the other type of industry trials are investigator-initiated. They’re smaller, one or two sites, and that really is your design. You have access to the full data, and we ensure that all those contracts are very explicit that we publish either positive or negative findings.

No one wants to necessarily build their career on industry trials, but industry trials can be very important in developing a portfolio, in helping move the field forward, in establishing an infrastructure that you can then use for your own ideas and your own trials.

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