Novotech CRO sees 26% growth in Asia tri­al ac­tiv­i­ty from biotechs, but still plen­ty of ca­pac­i­ty

As the Asia-Pa­cif­ic clin­i­cal tri­als sec­tor con­tin­ues to grow rapid­ly, Novotech the Asia-Pa­cif­ic-based CRO is see­ing biotech clin­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty up by 26%. But says there is still plen­ty of ca­pac­i­ty in the re­gion that fea­tures ad­vanced med­ical fa­cil­i­ties, sup­port­ive reg­u­la­to­ry en­vi­ron­ments, and more than 2.3 bil­lion peo­ple, large­ly treat­ment naïve, liv­ing in ur­ban ar­eas.

Chi­na, South Ko­rea and Aus­tralia have the most stud­ies reg­is­tered as re­cruit­ing or about to re­cruit ac­cord­ing to Clin­i­cal­Tri­als.Gov.

Aus­tralia has long been a pop­u­lar lo­ca­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al biotechs with its 43.5% re­bate on clin­i­cal tri­al costs, as well as qual­i­ty, and meet­ing time­lines.

Novotech, which has been in the re­gion for more than 2 decades, has ex­pe­ri­enced teams across 11 Asia-Pa­cif­ic coun­tries to ac­com­mo­date the in­creased de­mand.

The com­pa­ny says the growth is dri­ven by an in­crease in spon­sors re­quir­ing larg­er stud­ies, mak­ing the Asia-Pa­cif­ic re­gion a key lo­ca­tion to both ex­tend glob­al tri­als and to con­duct full clin­i­cal tri­als.

US Sup­port Of­fices

To sup­port this re­search shift to the Asia-Pa­cif­ic, Novotech has es­tab­lished teams of Asia re­gion clin­i­cal tri­al ex­perts at their of­fices in San Fran­cis­co, Boston and Wash­ing­ton DC. This way biotechs can meet Novotech teams lo­cal­ly to plan their tri­als roll-out, which are then man­aged by the Novotech of­fices in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic.

In ad­di­tion, the Novotech of­fice in D.C is fo­cused on reg­u­la­to­ry af­fairs.

The Asia-Pa­cif­ic tri­als growth trend is backed by find­ings by Glob­al­Da­ta:

The es­ti­mat­ed num­ber of clin­i­cal tri­al sites opened by biotech com­pa­nies in the Asia-Pa­cif­ic has been in­creas­ing by 26% each year on av­er­age over the last two years com­pared to 9.5% in the rest of the world.

Warn­ings and risks

Novotech CEO Dr John Moller (cen­tre) at an in­dus­try pre­sen­ta­tion in Seoul, South Ko­rea.

How­ev­er, Novotech cau­tioned that it was a com­plex process run­ning tri­als in the re­gion with cul­tur­al and reg­u­la­to­ry chal­lenges, and the need for strong re­la­tion­ships and part­ner­ships to ac­cess the best PIs, KOLs and the mil­lions of pa­tients via ad­vanced hos­pi­tal data­base sys­tems.

Novotech CEO Dr John Moller said:

“A CRO with­out the ex­pe­ri­ence and re­la­tion­ships in the re­gion puts at risk the ben­e­fits of tri­als in Asia in­clud­ing up to 20% cost sav­ings for piv­otal stud­ies and at­trac­tive time­lines, as well as im­pact­ing qual­i­ty.”

Asia-Pa­cif­ic Part­ner­ships

Novotech has signed over 20 for­mal part­ner­ships with key hos­pi­tals in South Ko­rea, Greater Chi­na, Thai­land, Sin­ga­pore, In­dia and Malaysia to fa­cil­i­tate the project man­age­ment of clin­i­cal tri­als for its biotech clients.

“Novotech’s in-coun­try re­la­tion­ships en­able a more com­pre­hen­sive un­der­stand­ing of lo­cal reg­u­la­to­ry changes, ac­cess to lead­ing PIs, strong site con­nec­tions, and pro­duc­tive pa­tient pop­u­la­tions to de­liv­er suc­cess for our clients with­in time­lines and bud­gets – es­pe­cial­ly as clin­i­cal tri­als are be­com­ing larg­er and more com­plex,” said Dr Moller.

Lead­ing In­ves­ti­ga­tors

Dr Moller said many clients are sur­prised to learn of the cal­iber of Asia-Pa­cif­ic In­ves­ti­ga­tors.

Re­cent re­search for Novotech has found that there are over 43,000 ac­tive Prin­ci­pal In­ves­ti­ga­tors across the 11 lead­ing Asia-Pa­cif­ic mar­kets, which is close to North Amer­i­ca, but with a low­er tri­al den­si­ty lim­it­ing the risk of com­pet­ing tri­als.

Novotech fa­cil­i­tates flex­i­ble work­ing to be­come the work­place of choice in the CRO ser­vices in­dus­try – Learn more

About Novotech
Es­tab­lished in 1996 and head­quar­tered in Syd­ney, Novotech is in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised as the lead­ing re­gion­al full-ser­vice con­tract re­search or­gan­i­sa­tion (CRO). Novotech has been in­stru­men­tal in the suc­cess of hun­dreds of Phase I – IV clin­i­cal tri­als in the Asia Pa­cif­ic re­gion.

Novotech pro­vides clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment ser­vices across all clin­i­cal tri­al phas­es and ther­a­peu­tic ar­eas in­clud­ing: fea­si­bil­i­ty as­sess­ments; ethics com­mit­tee and reg­u­la­to­ry sub­mis­sions, da­ta man­age­ment, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis, safe­ty ser­vices, cen­tral lab ser­vices, re­port write-up to ICH re­quire­ments, project and ven­dor man­age­ment. Novotech’s strong Asia Pa­cif­ic pres­ence in­cludes run­ning clin­i­cal tri­als in all key re­gion­al mar­kets. Novotech al­so has world­wide reach through the com­pa­ny’s net­work of strate­gic part­ners.  

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