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Changes in clinical trial length

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 14, pages 307–308 (2015)Cite this article

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Here, we present an analysis of potential efficiency gains in drug development with regard to the length of clinical trials, by focusing on trial-level data sourced from ClinicalTrials.gov (see Supplementary information S1 (box) for details of the data and analysis). We developed a multiple-regression model that measures trial length over time while controlling for factors including trial primary purpose, end point classification, trial size, therapeutic class, geographic location and type of sponsoring organization, and we examined the factors that have had the most influence on trial length.

Trial-length analysis

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Figure 1: Clinical trial characteristics.
Figure 2: Changes in clinical trial length.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, 4072, Queensland, Australia

    Lisette Pregelj, Martie-Louise Verreynne & Damian Hine

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  1. Lisette Pregelj
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  2. Martie-Louise Verreynne
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  3. Damian Hine
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Damian Hine.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary information S1 (box)

Data, methods and additional analyses (PDF 1600 kb)

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Pregelj, L., Verreynne, ML. & Hine, D. Changes in clinical trial length. Nat Rev Drug Discov 14, 307–308 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd4611

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