Information in practice

Survey of public information about ongoing clinical trials funded by industry: evaluation of completeness and accessibility

Eric Manheimer, graduate student,  Diana Anderson, TrialsCentral coordinator. 

Center for Clinical Trials and Evidence-based Healthcare, Brown University, 169 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island, 02912 USA

Correspondence to: Eric Manheimer
Eric_Manheimer{at}brown.edu

Objective: To evaluate the completeness and accessibility of public information about US clinical trials of drugs in development.
Design: Review of online registers of clinical trials.
Data sources: Drugs in phase III trials were identified using three drug industry sources: PhRMA Survey, What's in the Pipeline, and the NDA Pipeline. Drug trials were then searched for on the following publicly accessible registers of clinical trials: CancerNet.gov, CenterWatch.com, ClinicalTrials.gov, and registers associated with the 37 "Comprehensive Cancer Centers" designated by the National Cancer Institute.
Main outcome measure: Extent of availability of public information on phase III trials of drugs in development for treating either prostate or colon cancer.
Results: Search of industry sources identified 12 drugs for prostate cancer and 20 for colon cancer undergoing phase III trials. The most comprehensive publicly available register, ClinicalTrials.gov, contained trial listings for only seven of the prostate cancer drugs and 10 of the colon cancer drugs. Trials of three prostate cancer and three colon cancer drugs were listed on only one register each. A substantial proportion of trials of prostate cancer drugs (3/12) and colon cancer drugs (8/20) were not associated with trial listings in any registers.
Conclusions: Existing trials registers are unlikely to be meeting user needs since many ongoing drug trials are not listed. There is a clear need for a comprehensive clinical trials register encompassing all ongoing trials, including industry sponsored trials.

What is already known on this topic There are hundreds of distinct, predominantly online registers of ongoing drug trials, with overlapping, non-standardised contents The lack of organisation and centralisation of information on clinical trials poses problems for those seeking information about ongoing trials and for researchers preparing and maintaining systematic reviews What this study adds Pharmaceutical industry "pipeline sources" can be used as sources of information about drugs in clinical trial testing, but these sources often contain non-standardised and incomplete information, making it difficult to search for and summarise current testing activities Many drugs that were identified as undergoing testing in pipeline sources were not listed in any of the trials registers searched