Clinical Trial Abundance: What it Means, Why We Need It, and How We Get There

In recent decades, drug discovery has been transformed by scientific advances, including AI. But increasingly, our ability to design drugs and generate hypotheses is outpacing our ability to test them. Clinical trials have become the critical bottleneck to medical advances. That’s why we are advocating for clinical trial abundance: a focus on making clinical trials cheaper, faster, and more abundant – and more capable of generating useful clinical evidence.

In my talk, I’ll discuss the barriers that hold back clinical trial abundance, and how we can address them; including what FDA and policymakers can do. I’ll discuss potential reforms to early-phase clinical trials, as well as ways to improve our clinical trial infrastructure and operations in the US. I’ll put these proposals for reform in the context of two key developments: the rise of artificial intelligence, and the increasingly important role that China is playing in clinical trials. I’ll also talk about drug regulation more broadly: depending on how we design our regulations, they can either hold back innovation or enable it.